The guilty
by Charly2003
Summary: [Eyes of the Dragon] NOW COMPLETE! AU with a princess instead of a prince. Roland the Good has two children: Peter, the heir to the throne, and Tamara, the second-born princess. Flagg plots in the shadow to put the princess on the throne and meanwhile he develops a dark obsession for her.
1. Chapter 1

Hi! I want to state upfront two things: 1) I'm Italian and therefore English is NOT my mother language and 2) the story is complete.

That said, I'm sorry for the mistakes you WILL find since I have no beta for this story. "The guilty" is a very old story and it sprouts from the very first fanfiction I ever wrote when I was 15. Now I'm a lot older (30somethingIwillnottellyouhowmuch) and I'm a very different person with a different prospective in life. The original story was unfinished, in the 2003 I started to write it again from nothing and the following is what I end up with. I know, after nearly 15 years, that is not much, in fact it is a little childish in some of its parts, but be patient. It is old but it has a special place in my heart since it was the first multichapter story I finished. That is why I'm publishing it as it is without improving it.

Flagg! I was forgetting to rant about him! Ok. I cannot stomach the majority of Stephen King books. I always see with pleasure the movies but the books… no, thank you. So, while I watched "The Stand" I never read it and therefore when I noticed that the "Eyes of Dragon" villain had the same name I chucked it up to a coincidence. The two characters, the one in the movie I saw and the one in the book, were too different. Then this year the movie of the Dark Tower came out so I went to Wikipedia to have some information (I know, I know it is different from the books like the night from the day but I don't know when or if I will read the books) And lo and behold there is a Flagg there too! And wiki says (I know wiki is not the bible) that the three are one and the same. Duh. And Delain was his birthplace! Double duh. Neither Dark Tower nor The Stand will make an appearance in this fanfiction. But it gave me the shivers to know that The Flagg is the same.

Let's move on the story itself.

I am compelled to issue a **dire warning**. The rating is there for a reason. This is going to touch delicate issues like underage sex (but in the book Sasha married at 15 a man 33 years older than her so the underage will be canon), violence and dubcon boarding on noncon. Flagg is the main character after all so there are not going to be sunshine and puppies.

My idea pivot around the changing of the sex of Roland secondborn from Thomas to Tamara (and aging her because Thomas is like 12 in the book at his crowning).

The characters and main plot belong to Stephen King. I just created Tamara and a couple of situations. I own nothing and I'm making no profit from my fanfictions.

There are going to be 3 chapters made up of many "vignettes" because 5 years ago I was just starting to learn how to write and I still favoured short oneshots.

For now, that's all folks.

Enjoy.

 **1.I**

Tamara was ten when, looking in her mirror, she realized she was not pretty. Her brother Peter was tall, with the dark hair and blue eyes of the western provinces people like their mother, a big boy who made the girls in the court sigh in longing: he was what fairy-tales said a prince should be; everybody thought it was a good thing he looked nothing like his ugly, short and crooked legs father. His father was the first to think so and he often boasted the fact his firstborn was the splitting image of the mother.

Tamara on the other hand, even having her mother's figure, looked like her father: she was brown eyed and her hair were blond and thin and, again like her father, she was not inclined to deep thoughts. She has no coordination which made her clumsy and ungraceful and, even if she had not two left feet, she has a penchant for falling on her face, so much that her dance instructor has given up after a couple of lessons, comparing her unfavourably with her brother.

Therefore the princess was looking in her mirror and seeing a round but not cute face that was covered with brown freckles, mud-coloured eyes and straw-like hair. She tried to stretch the skin of her cheeks with her hands and saw broken and dirty nails at the end of short chubby fingers. She turned her eyes to her dress critically: the velvet dress had food stains on the front and grass stains at knees height. She felt like crying.

Princess Tamara could not even console herself with the knowledge that what she lacked in the look department she made up in another fields. A princess could be ugly but she had to be very well-read, or she had to be a paragon of goodness or at least play a music instrument like an angel. Instead she had no gift: she hated studying and when she thought too much she got headaches; she was not particularly good, on the contrary she was envious of everything the other children had and she had not; and her aptitude for music was the same as her skill in dancing, in which she was a disaster.

To be honest, Tamara was too hard with herself; her bone structure seemed to hide the promise of a pretty but not gorgeous woman if she quitted the honeybuns she was so greedy for and her hair just needed a little care. Alas, nothing could be done about her character nor to make her like culture or anything music related, as dancing for example. He shyness and lack of self-confidence guaranteed her isolation from children her age and her habit of spying on her brother and his friend from under brushes had marked her as a queer and eccentric little girl. Peter had tried to engage her in his games but her incompetence in sports and her clumsiness had always made her refuse and now it was too late: Peter was too old to play with children.

Princess Tamara was a neglected child, overlooked by her father and consumed by envy for her brother who had all their father's attention, but she was _not_ an evil child, she was only a lonely child and if somebody where to stop and think about it they would realize that horrible things could happen to neglected children. Unfortunately nobody worried about her nor for her; the castle was full of servants and if one ignored her there were for sure another one catering to her every whim; if her father didn't speak to her for days even when they sat beside each other for meals there was the head cook who would cheer her up with honeybuns. She had food on her table and cloths on her back, she was the daughter of the _king_ and therefore she lacked nothing.

Moreover she _had_ a friend, a special one because she was, deep down, afraid of him but he was the only one she had and so she kept him close with proud possessiveness since he didn't seem interested in making friends with anybody else. Tamara thought they were well suited to each other because they were the odd ones at the castle: the princess who killed the beloved queen at birth and who nobody wanted and the court wizard who was respected but feared; no one seemed to care for their company.

That day Flagg cached her at the mirror making faces at herself. Tamara didn't hear him approaching because he had come through one of the secret passages he often made use when visiting her and therefore she had a start seeing his shadow moving behind her reflection.

\- Tell me wizard, is there a spell or a potion that offers beauty and grace?

Flagg tossed back a little the hood he always kept lowered on his face, enough to uncover his eyes and part of his brow. It was something he did only when they were alone together. The wizard shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

\- I'm sorry princess but no magic can make you change into something you are not.

Tamara hid her face in her hands, moaning in desperation.

\- What's the meaning of this sudden interest?

\- I heard some maids saying how gorgeous Peter is. That is not a new development. But then… she said he will have no trouble finding himself a wife, that every girl would be eager to marry him even if, instead of been the king's son, he was the horse keeper's!

Flagg reached silently her side and placed a bony yet strong hand on her shoulder.

\- Why would that matter to you Tammy?

Tamara shivered in pleasure at that nickname. It was something shared only between them. Nobody else had ever bothered considering her so important as to give her a nickname.

\- It does matter to me! If Peter marries then in some years it will be my turn. But I will find nobody willing to have me even if I am a princess. I'll never have anybody to love and to be loved by in return.

The wizard's hand moved from her shoulder to her head, ruffling her hair perhaps a little too hard.

\- You are only ten, princess. A lot of time will have to pass by before breaching the topic of marriage for you. You will not be pressured into marring anybody until you'll find somebody you like. Moreover love is not required in case of royal marriages, many settle for friendship. We are friends, are you not happy with me?

Their eyes meet on the silver surface of the mirror and the little girl's eyes lightened up.

\- I could marry _you_!

Flagg's eyes widened and his mouth opened a little in astonishment. It had been centuries since anybody surprised him so.

\- Believe me, many, many years will pass before it is time for you to marry. Rather, you have yet to ask me why I came to visit you!

§§§

Flagg was sitting on his armchair in his laboratory in the dungeons and he was engrossed in his favourite pastime: plotting. What an idea the princess had that day: marry him! What a madness. Even if she had been merely joking, something he was not all that sure about, he would have to be a complete fool to contemplate sitting on the throne. Especially because the fool sitting on the throne once his plans come into fruition would be missing a head. No: he was going to stay quietly on the sideline watching the reign went up in flames, torn apart by civil war and he was going to come back just in time to witness the lynching of the monarch. He had been planning Delain downfall for centuries and he felt the dark age the kingdom was going to fall into this time would be spectacular and very long indeed.

Nothing had to interfere.

Tamara must become queen in place of her brother. Were Peter to become king, Flagg would have to retreat, perhaps even run away: the young prince made no secret of his dislike for the wizard. But Flagg was reluctant to leave when he was so close to his goal he could _taste_ victory.

Once Tamara become queen he would have to hasten the march toward the kingdom ruin. He would not permit the chit to marry risking a repeat of the "Sasha predicament". He had thought that girl from a lesser noble house totally harmless, instead she had not only undermined his sway on Roland, she had even birthed that worthless whelp, Peter. No, once removed the old man and the boy, the only influence on the new queen had to be him: no family, no friends, no husband; until the forgone conclusion came and the rioting crowd pulled her out of the palace to butcher her. It was somehow a shame, really: Tamara was his creature and seldom he had had somebody so willingly and eager to please him. She would do the job she was born to do, she would die and he would always remember her fondly as his greatest success.


	2. Chapter 2

That morning, which was going to be decisive for better or for worse in the future sequence of events of Roland the Good children's lives, the royal wizard had been nervous and antsy. He felt he had something to do, he didn't know exactly what: a half-formed thought, a deed yet to accomplish… there was something rolling around in the back of his mind and the nervous energy it created hadn't let him rest for days. His natural instinct for evil was nudging at him like a thorn on his side and finally Flagg thought he understood what it was trying to tell him when he witnessed for the umpteenth time the favouritism the king displayed for his son.

One of the happiest day in the life of the unhappy princess had been when her father taught her to use the bow and to shoot arrows. One day, her bored old father had took her to the shooting range, put in her hand a bow and taught her how to pull the bow-string, to aim and hit the target. They spent the whole day in something the king excelled, perhaps the only thing, and that his daughter who hated to study and to exercise any sport, has discovered came to her naturally, as breathing. Nobody told the king that arching wasn't an activity fitting for a girl since the bow was a weapon. Just as nobody said it to the princess and therefore she had kept on training in only thing she discovered she did better than Peter.

That ill-fated week, her brother had been out hunting with their father and he managed to kill with a lucky shot a big stag. His proud father had described the episode loudly during dinner and the following day at breakfast and then at lunch causing to turn red in embarrassment his son and green with envy his daughter who would never have the opportunity to show she was a better aim because, as a girl, she was forbidden from taking part in the hunts.

Tamara got up from the table mid-lunch but her father, busy praising his son, didn't even notice it. Flagg instead did, as he did noticed the expression of disgust and suppressed rage on the princess' face and his natural instinct for evil, that had bothered him for a while, jabbed at him furiously.

That same evening, when the princess failed to show herself at the dinner table, he went to her, finding the girl laying in her bed, still dressed and staring at the ceiling blankly, her complexion pale and the red eyes of someone who had cried bitter and desperate tears.

The sorcerer sat at her side and for the first time he realized how casually the princess treated him. No young lady, and at twelve the princess was nearly a teenager, should let a man not her relative be alone with her in her bedroom, sit on her bed and be so near as to touch her. Tamara instead was not only not alarmed by it, but treated the matter as it was ordinary, as if the impropriety of their behaviour never came to her mind.

\- How are you, Tamara? You didn't come to dinner, are you not hungry?

\- No, I'm not. To be truthful I have a slight stomach-ache.

The little girl rolled on her side to face the sorcerer, folding herself around his bent knee like an affection-seeking kitten wanting to be petted by its owner.

Flagg placed his palm on her brow, as if to check her temperature.

\- It doesn't seem like you're running a fever. But I could give you a potion to settle your upset stomach, if you want.

She shook her head, pressing her brow against the sorcerer's knee.

\- Do you know what I think? I think you don't need a potion but something to cheer you up. Would you like it Tammy? Would you like to see something extraordinary? I could show you something I'm the only one to know, share it with you. It will be our secret, only ours. What do you say?

Tamara sat up, showing her interest.

\- What kind of secret?

\- One about your father. Well?

At the word "father" her eyes shone and she nodded enthusiastically her agreement.

\- Yes, I want to see it.

\- Then come with me.

He lead her outside her room and down the stairs used by the servants, through corridors the princess used rarely and came to a stop at a corridor that looked like all the others but that was special.

\- Do you know where we are, Tamara?

\- I think so: we passed the laundry-room, right?

He nodded under his hood.

\- Would you be able to find your way back here?

\- Of course.

She exclaimed.

\- Good. Now watch closely and take a great care to never be seen by anybody. Is it clear? Nobody!

She nodded dutifully.

\- Fourth stone from the bottom after the chipped one. Quickly: press it!

The princess did as she was told and watched open-mouthed the wall opening up like a door. Flagg pushed her inside impatiently, closing the passage behind his back and making everything go dark. Tamara, mindful of another episode that had seen as main characters the sorcerer and the tower bats, huddle up, covering her hair with her arms and choking back a scream. The sorcerer sneered quietly, light up a blue flame with his index finger and then whispered to her.

\- Don't worry, there are no ugly pests here. We are the only living beings in this passage, I assure you there are not even spiders.

The princess looked around and saw with her own eyes the lack of bats. They were inside a narrow room, covered in wood panels and she could hear her father dogs barking somewhere under them. The sorcerer pushed his hood back to show his brow and his black eyes shone red in the light of his summoned flame. His pallid face was nearly demoniac and everybody else would for sure run for his or her life at that sight, food for future nightmares. But not Tamara. She had grown used to Flagg's look, in fact he had accustomed her to him gradually for years until his unnatural presence resulted natural for her. Even if something in the back of her mind was withdrawing in horror, she felt at ease with him, like someone who had become friendly with the monster under their bed. The sorcerer snuffed the light out, sinking them back into the darkness and then, placing his hand between her shoulder blades, he nudged her forward to the end of the secret room where suddenly two points of light appeared. The princess got on her toes to look through them and was amazed by what she saw. Looking through the peepholes she could see her father warming his old bones in front of the fire. He was in his private sitting room, where he kept the stuff heads of his hunting trophies. A delighted smile blossomed on the princess' face. Spying is a very bad thing, but if one of you ever did it, you will recognize the pleasure Tamara felt in staying near her beloved father without incurring in the risk of being rejected and berated for it.

Flagg encircled her waist with his arm, holding her up propped against his chest as she spied the king. He bent his head to whisper in her hear, tickling her cheek with his breath.

\- You have to be very careful when you come here. Spying is bad manner but spying a king is a capital crime. You'll have to always, always check nobody is nearby before using the secret passage. If you have a light remember to put it out before opening the peepholes: your father may be half blind but he could become suspicious seeing a light coming from behind the wall. And last but not least, should you be discovered…

The sorcerer hold on her tightly, so much it hurt.

\- … you _will_ say you find out about this passage by chance and by your own. If you say my name you'll regret it. Is it clear?

\- Y-yes!

She choked out, breathless.

\- Good.

He relaxed his grip, letting Tamara put back her feet on the ground and then he closed the peepholes. However he didn't pull away from her and for a moment he stood perfectly still as that nervous energy suddenly took hold of him, driving him to do something that surprised even him and that he would later never be able to explain to himself fully.

He turned the princess around, gripping her by her shoulders and pushing her against the wood wall. In the darkness he bent down and kissed her on the lips. It wasn't a lustful kiss, far from it. He just pressed his own thin lips against hers. He could have done much more, because she let out a surprised gasp, opening her mouth to him, but he didn't. He just pressed his lips to hers and his body to the body of the girl, crushing her against the wall for the duration of four breaths. It is impossible to describe how Tamara felt for those four breaths. The wood panel scratching her back, the wizard's hands gripping her shoulders like talons, his hard and unnaturally hot body, his thin lips pressed against her own, his nose brushing her cheek and the chemical and spicy smell that she would for the rest of her life connect to kisses, Flagg and small dark places.

He retired slowly, keeping her at arm's length and inspecting her expression to infer her reaction to his action. Tamara couldn't see him in the dark but he could see her: her eyes were lidded, her head tilted back and her breath laboured. Her knees were weak and she would have crumpled if he weren't keeping her upright. She looked like a seduced girl kissed by her lover and awaiting a second kiss. He let go of her shoulders gingerly when he felt sure she would not keel over and gently lead her to the secret passage door, guiding her hand to the opening mechanism. Then he took her back to her bedroom, supporting her as she leant on him. They didn't exchange a word.

§§§

Flagg was once again sitting on his armchair, in his dungeon, and was trying to analyse what had just transpired. He was staring ahead, chin rested over his joined hands, perfectly still.

He couldn't understand why he had assaulted the princess. He immediately discarded as reason a possible sexual attraction: the girl's undeveloped body bore no appeal to him. Flagg wasn't the kind of man who indulges in the pleasures of the flesh. His passions took him to other, darker places. He did know the depravities laying in that way: a long, long time ago he had been on the employment of a warlord. The man had had a crowd of wives and an army of concubines and he derived a sick pleasure in giving to Flagg, who at that time had had a different name, the ones he got bored or dissatisfied with. The wizard had catered to his king's whims abusing and damaging those women so much that they would ask for a merciful death rather than be gifted to him.

It wasn't either the flattery of the besotted look she sent his way: such a feeling annoyed him greatly. When he had been young and his years counted less than a century, he had been the object of a little serving wrench's stupid infatuation. He didn't remembered her name, nor her face but her terrified eyes as he choked her life out of her were still in his memory. It hadn't been his first murder, but the one that had given him the most satisfaction at that time. The only moment of pleasure she gave him had been as he snuffed out her young life.

Perhaps with Tamara it had been a power trip: he had pushed his authority over her to its limits and the princess, instead of rebel and run, become soft and pliable under him. She hadn't been afraid but nearly exited by a contact that should have filled her with dread. She was really his, totally controlled by him: he could have had her on that floor if he so desired and it had been clear to both of them. She had, figuratively speaking, give up the fight, rolled on her back showing her belly and yielded to his will.

§§§

A couple of years passed since that kiss and none had spoken about it again. Tamara, at first, had awaited with a mixture of fear and hope for him to approach her again but nothing happened. Sometimes his eyes would linger on her lips and now he touched her more easily, placing a hand on her shoulder or caressing her head or, rarely and only when they were alone, wrapping an arm around her waist but he never clinging her to himself. His behaviour had been the one of a friend, sometime an affectionate friend, but he never showed any peculiar interest in her and the princess would start to think she fainted in that passage dreaming everything up. But then he would look at her intensely, brushing her shoulder or hair, and her heart would beat madly in her chest and he would shoot her a _look_ and she knew he was thinking about the kiss.

I said Flagg's behaviour was overly friendly only when they were alone and nobody could see them but somebody _saw_ them: Peter. The young prince, a grown boy by then, had always found suspicious his father's sorcerer and therefore he tried to always being informed of his whereabouts. That day however he was looking for his sister and finding her in the company of such a dark person filled him with alarm.

The castle gardens were huge, the wives of the Delain kings had found in it an outlet for the boredom their role as the ruling kings' wives relegate them. They had increased continually the gardens until they become a real park. Each of them had added something following their personal taste or the fashion of the year therefore the gardens had well trimmed hedges and linear flowerbeds, little woods with secluded fountains to delight the guests with water plays, stone gardens and even a maze. One of those queens had planted her own little horror garden with poisonous plants that she dried and dusted to administer to her rivals and lovers. She had lived between Flagg's previous visit to Delain and the current one and so he had not meet her but he had appreciated very much that little corner of hell and brought it back to life with loving care after years of neglect. He was there with Tamara that day, when Peter saw them together.

The prince wanted to speak with his sister about the oncoming birthday of their father and the gift they could get him together and a guard told him she had been seen in the gardens, going in the fountains' garden direction. He looked for her there, without finding her, and so he started to walk about aimlessly, seeing his sister in the sorcerer's company taking a stroll in the stone garden. They then headed to an abandoned part of the park and the prince managed to follow them unseen because of the wood wildness. He pursued them to a meadow he had never before being to and that had many flowerbeds filled with plants unknown to Peter. What struck him unfavourably was the unusual behaviour of the sorcerer: Flagg had threw back a little the hood he always kept low on his face, was gesticulating lively as he talked and was smiling to his attentive watcher. Tamara was looking up to him with open admiration and followed his every gesture and when he put his arm around her shoulders she clung to his cloak in some kind of hug. Then they bent on a flower.

Peter was observing them from behind: his sister kneeling on the ground and the sorcerer at her side, his arm on her back as he caressed her hair and then her shoulder nearly absent-mindedly while he explained her who-knows-what. Their bodies were so close that their sides were pressed against each other. Peter had a surge of repugnance in the face of such familiarity. How could his sister bear to have that man so near? His hands on her? The sorcerer bent his face to whisper in her ear and Peter had the crazy presentiment he would kiss her but he didn't. The couple got up and moved to another plant, resuming their conversation. The act repeated itself more than once before they left the garden, walking side by side so close they kept bumping into each other, the wizard's hand between the princess shoulders to guide her on the way home. Peter stayed still, letting a lot of time pass before following them and he used that time to think. He never realized how much time his sister were spending with Flagg: when they were in the same room they barely exchanged words, usually about the girl's studies. What made the boy sick in the stomach had been the easy manner the sorcerer treated the princess, the intimacy surrounding them: Peter had reached an age when he was starting to look with interest to the members of the opposite sex and had recognized their behaviour as similar to the one of a couple involved in a courtship. It filled him with disgust, not only because she was his little sister but because he was _Flagg_ and that strange creature one could barely call a human being could not be interested in that way in her, he mustn't. It was more than a matter of age difference, the sorcerer had served his grandmother. More than a matter of impropriety, their social standings were incompatible. It was above all an instinctive horror that sized him: like watching a wolf being nice with a shy lamb as it waited for the right moment to strike and devour it. It was unnatural.


	3. Chapter 3

Hi! I wanted to say that I chose to cut the 3 chapters in smaller parts, so this is the first part of chapter 2.

This is the most explicit chapter of all. Very explicit so read it at your own risk. It's very violent too. But not vulgar I hope. Remember to read the notes at the end!

About Thomas/Tamara's age. In the book Thomas is crowned king at 12, but I hope I've made clear that Tamara is older: she's 12 when Flagg kiss her in the secret passage and "some years later" Peter see them together in the park. I leave her exact age to your discretion.

Lastly, I chose to jump straight to the crowning, cutting off king Roland's poisoning and Peter' trial and incarceration.

 **2\. I**

Nobody can imagine the desperation princess Tamara was feeling as the fever made her burn and the news of her brother's trial and incarceration reached her. The fever made her alternatively burn and shiver and her sleep was troubled by nightmares where her father and brother were the main characters. Moreover the idea of what _He_ would do to her should he discover what she had witnessed that night tormented her while awake and made her moan and sob in terror.

Her despondency was caused more by her mental state than her physical state by the time Flagg came to her bedside the morning of the day of her coronation, resolved to make her ask for his help. He thought her in his power, thought her so scared of what was awaiting her that she would beg him to stay, offering him the position of First Advisor.

Tamara was crying and her tears shone on her pasty cheeks. Flagg, in his contempt for that show of weakness, couldn't even imagine how she, in that very moment, was safeguarding in her mind the secret that could dismantle centuries of evil plotting.

\- I believe this is a goodbye forever, Tammy.

He grabbed the walking stick he had propped against her bed. He was smiling outwards but inside he was seething because she had yet to ask him to stay.

He turned as if to go when he felt her pull at his cloak. She was gripping it tightly and her knuckles were white for the strength she was using.

\- Please, don't leave me, not now, please…

He sat back on the bed and bent on her.

\- I can't stay, how could I? I was the king's sorcerer and now the king is dead.

\- You could be whoever you want but don't leave me: I shall give you whatever you want!

Flagg chose to let her implore a little more so he shook his head and sighed as if refusing.

Tamara paled even more. She had just lost her father and her brother and now the only person in the world who had ever showed her some fondness was going away when she needed him the most. She didn't thought of her suspicions about his role in her father's death: she couldn't report him, he was everything for her, only now she understood it. She decided to sacrifice her own brother to defend him because she loved him of a love born of loneliness and with a last surge of desperation she tried to hold him by her side offering everything she had: herself.

She grasped his cloak collar and pulled, in part to lift herself from the pillows, in part to pull him down to her level. She pushed back his hood, uncovering for the first time his head and, as he widened his eyes in shock, she sunk her fingers in his black hair and pressed her lips to his.

Flagg was flabbergasted by it. How could he have anticipated such a reaction? He let out an unbelieving gasp while Tamara let go of his hair to cling to his neck, embracing him passionately and only the covers tangled around her legs prevented her from climbing in his lap. The wizard's hands were hovering over the princess' shoulders, ready to fling her away but instead they were opening and closing in fists, uncertainly. In the end Flagg came to a resolution, he closed his eyes and it was as if something inside him blossomed. He felt his lower abdomen on fire, as if filled by boiling lava, and a kind of dark predatory passion took hold of him. A part of him that had been left unused for centuries woke up and he felt himself harden in a nearly painful way. Flagg moaned for the pleasure the pain was giving him. His arms wrapped around the girl who had so unwisely roused that side of him. He drew her to him, opening his mouth and deepening the kiss, tasting the tears that were still soaking her cheeks and lips.

Tamara found herself crushed against her bed sheets as the sorcerer kissed her in a way she never believed possible. His tongue was moving inside her mouth, making her unable to breathe properly and scaring her greatly but the idea of rejecting him scared her even more and therefore she tightened her hug, choosing to ignore her instincts that were screaming at her to push him away and call for help.

Flagg climbed on the bed, pushing aside frenetically the covers separating him from the girl. Tamara, instead of struggling and trying to get away, undone the brooch keeping his cloak closed and pushed it from his shoulders. For the first time in their acquaintance, the princess saw him without his trademark cloak and hood. He was wearing simple trousers and a black tunic with a leather belt from which some pouches and a short stiletto hung. The sorcerer backed off a little, just enough for her to unfasten his belt and let it slide on the floor. At that point Tamara stared at the man she invited in her bed. The skin of Flagg's face was pale and stretched over the bones, he had light winkles around his black bottomless eyes and thin lips that contributed making his expression terrifying and grave. Tamara couldn't know it but under the burning lust run an undercurrent of incredulity. He believed that the princess' boldness came mostly from ignorance; she probably had no idea of what was going to transpire. Like every girl her age and social standing she had been left totally in the dark about the activities of the marital bed and, however, no previous knowledge could have prepared her for him. Her willing collaboration fanned even more the fire inside him. He stared into her wide eyes that were full of fear, in spite of her actions. Those thoughts crossed his mind quickly, the time of a deep breath, the time Tamara needed to discover she didn't know what to do from there on and therefore she gripped his tunic and kissed him again. He took an important decision: the girl for some foolish and crazy reason wanted and trusted him and he was going to reward her by not destroying her. Wearing a determined expression he ripped in half her nightgown from neck to belly, gulping down her surprised gasp. He helped her out of the sleeves and she, although trembling, pushed away the ruined garment until she was left naked under him. Flagg disrobed quickly and trapped her under his body, pressing her against the bedsheet and preventing her from seeing, and fearing, that part of his anatomy that was soon going to pierce her.

Flagg was keeping her pinned with his gaze , his eyes were like the eyes of a poisonous snake and she couldn't think straight, not with all that pale skin on sight. She could feel his hard and unnaturally hot body stretched over hers and recalled the kiss he gave her, so many years before inside the secret room. It made her think about her father and her brother, about what was happening that very moment and what she was letting the sorcerer do to her. Her eyes filled again with tears that slipped along her cheeks to her pillow. The desperation, the loneliness, the guilt and her own inability to deal with the circumstances instead of urging her to have a change of mind, spurred her into clinging to him who had been the only steady point during her childhood, the object of her adolescence fascinations and the source of comfort during her whole life. She wrapped herself around him, hugging his waist, hiding her face between his shoulder and neck and encircling his hips with her legs, drawing him as near as possible. He went still with a rasping breath and Tamara felt something hard and stiff push against her most intimate parts. She started to sob in a mixture of fear, excitement and shame.

Flagg placed a hand over her mouth, at the same time clamping her jaw in a hard grip.

He bent his head to whisper in her ear.

\- This is going to hurt a lot, Tammy.

Then he pushed himself into her, with some difficulty because she was an innocence and he hadn't readied her. He tore into her, hurting himself as well because she was too tight and dry and stopped only once totally sunk into her body. She was trapped between his bulk and the sheets drenched with her sweat and blood, screaming helplessly against his hand, wriggling to try to escape from thething that had stabbed her with such violence. Flagg took some moments to enjoy the exquisite mixture of pain and pleasure at being inside the body of a woman after so much time, then he begun to retire from her to start to move. Tamara had thought the terrible pain she felt to have been the most horrible part of the experience, but as soon as he moved to exit her aching body it was even worst. Therefore she clamped her legs around his hips tighter still, making him go back inside and stopping his withdrawal. Her inside were on fire, but the pain that was a dull throbbing if he stayed still, become an acute and intolerable agony if he tried to move.

Flagg indulged her and kept still. He enjoyed the feeling of her trembling flash as it made space for his member, he smelt the metallic scent of blood knowing it was going to ease his movements. Through the pleasure fogging his mind some kind of pride was emerging: his girl, his Tamara, has stopped shouting and, even if she was still crying and trembling from the pain he was inflicting on her, she was clinging to him looking for comfort from the person hurting her. He took the right decision. He begun to rub their bodies together, small circular movements, getting out and back inside of her just a little to create the right kind of friction to pleasure himself.

He was moving and it hurt, it burned and she could smell the blood. She knew she would bleed her first time and that it would hurt but she had never imagined something like that. The small movements he was making started to make her feel something different from the pain. There, where he was inside her, it was still an agony but a little above it, where he was rubbing against her… it was nearly pleasing. It wasn't enough to overwhelm the pain but it helped, somehow, and it confused her too. How could it be possible? To feel pain and pleasure at the same time? Tossed between two sensations at the very end of the spectrum, she kept on cry and writhe but during all the time it took the sorcerer to peak and collapse on her, she never release her tight hold on him.

Flagg detached from her with some difficulties: her legs and arms were stiff and wouldn't let him go. He rolled on his side and looked at himself: he was flaccid and bloodied. Then he turned to look at Tamara. The princess was staring at the ceiling emotionless, her face red and wet with tears and perspiration. The sorcerer had a moment of uncertainty: it had been consensual and yet she had the same lost expression of the others.

\- Tamara?

She turned her face toward him, her eyes cleared and focused on him. With a pitiful and needy moan she rolled on his chest, curling against his side. He hugged her with some relief: she wasn't broken.

\- How do you feel, Tamara?

\- It hurts!

She whined.

\- It told you it would be so.

He replayed. After all, he did warn her.

\- You aren't going away now, right? You aren't going to leave me, right?

She asked with a trembling and thin voice. He kissed her forehead and then he pushed her away, getting up and redressing himself quickly. He grimaced as he cleaned himself: the blood of virgins was rare and expensive and the sample was now contaminated. He probably took too much to answer her question because Tamara begun to hiccup and beg.

\- No Tamara, of course not. How could I ever leave you?

He draped the cloak over his shoulders and went back to the princess' bedside. She was really a pitiful sight. Her skin was pastry, her eyes were red from crying too much and there was blood, perhaps too much blood, between her tights that were going to be covered in bruises soon from the strength which she clung to him with. He covered her with the sheet.

\- Stay here, like a good little girl. I will go downstairs to the dungeons, to my workroom to get you an unguent against the pain.

He gave her a quick and violent kiss and then he disappeared silently, moving lightly like a ghost, using one of the secret passages.

Tamara put a trembling hand between her legs and her fingers become coated in blood and that strange, slimy liquid he left inside of her. She felt faint and nauseous. Her flash was torn but he said he went to get an unguent: all she had to do was to wait for his return and he would fix everything that was wrong. She was still unbelieving for what transpired, she didn't know what kind of madness or bravery took her and coaxed her into offering herself to Flagg. All she knew was that she was ruined. Her nanny had been clear about it: if you were to bed somebody before marriage then you were a fallen and ruined woman and no man would ever marry you. Tamara did feel ruined and dirty. Nobody had ever wanted her: not as a daughter, or princess, nor as a friend. Not as a wife for sure. Only him, only Flagg. The princess now feared he wouldn't want her anymore, she was spoiled good now and nobody wanted that. After all she had been the one throwing herself at him, he hadn't reached out for her. What if he wasn't going to want her anymore? What if he didn't want to touch her again? If she was to lose his friendship, if he was going to treat her with coldness or, even worst, veiled disgust, Tamara was sure she would die.

Fortunately he came back soon. Flagg poured some water on the basin she used to wash in the mornings, picked up from the floor her ruined nightgown and sat on the bedside.

\- Lay on your back and spread your legs.

She obeyed, quivering in fear at the thought he wanted to take her again. Instead the sorcerer ripped the nightclothes into shreds and used them to wash the blood. Tamara bite her lower lip to prevent herself from screaming when he run the wet cloth between her legs.

\- The pain is normal, the blood too.

He hesitated a moment.

\- You don't have to fear a pregnancy.

Flagg dropped the stained rag in the reddish water and pulled out of his pocket a violet vial, uncorked it and poured the yellow oily liquid on his fingers. He seemed to hesitate again and then, staring fixedly into Tamara's eyes, he placed lightly and gently his hand on the juncture between her legs. He touched her with the care and the attention he usually reserved for his collection of poisons. Tamara had expected the unguent to burn horribly, like the unguents Flagg had used on her during her childhood, but instead she felt an immediate relief spreading over her: it was refreshing and numbing and Tamara relaxed with a sigh.

However Flagg didn't just spread the unguent on her aching flash but he begun to caress her, imitating with his fingers the movements he performed as he took her, avoiding the part of her he had penetrated and focusing his attention just above it. The unexpected pleasure she felt before, swept through her again, stronger now that the pain was gone. The princess found herself unable to master her own body: her legs spread wider to accommodate his hand, her heels drove into the bed and her back arched as her throat made sounds she didn't know she could make. The pleasure was sharp and centred there where before there has been only pain and it was spreading in weaves all over her body. She got goosebumps and felt the points of her breasts harden. Tamara opened the eyes she didn't even realised she had closed, in time to see the other hand of the sorcerer reaching out to grasp one of her breast and pinch the nipple. The pleasure become unbearable, similar to pain and with a prolonged moan she reached her first orgasm that left her gasping and limp under the sorcerer's hands. Flagg took advantage of her state to push some unguent inside her passage, there where she needed it the most.

He washed his hands in the bloodied water and then he coolly dried them with the remains of her nightgown. His face was expressionless under the hood. His lust had been sated momentarily, like a sleeping volcano awaiting the next earthquake to toss out death and fire. He watched with impatience mixed to an inexplicable anxiety the shivering princess. She was still damp with sweat and blood.

\- In a couple of hours you'll be crowned. Stand up and begun to prepare, you don't want your maids to see you in such an embarrassing state.

She stared at him with mute incomprehension and he reached the limits of his patience. He grasped her arm and dragged her from the bed. Tamara hit the floor hard, moaning and gripping her belly as she started again to cry.

\- For all that is unholy, are you crying _again_? On your feet, you fool, there is no time to wash, put something on.

He lifted and shook her. Finally she regained her equilibrium and with her free arm tried to cover her nudity. He shot her a disdainful sneer.

\- I already saw what you have and believe me, it's not different from what every other woman has. Now…

He bend his head, hidden in the shadows of the hood, to get on level with the girl's confused face.

\- … get dressed.

Then he dropped her on a chair and, seemly forgetting about her, he undo the bed balling up the bloodied sheets along the ruined nightgown, making sure the red stains stayed inside the bundle. In the end he turned over the mattress to hide the last blood stain. When he looked back at her he noticed with some satisfaction that she at least had her underclothes on and was in the process to get into the petticoat.

\- I'm letting the maids inside, perhaps they will be able to fix your hair and manage to make you look presentable.

Afterwards he marched out the princess' bedroom with the bundle of sheets under his arm. When one of the maid reached out to take it he gave her a terrible smile and told her the princess threw up the first potion he gave her to heal her from her illness and it was better if he was the one to deal with the stain. The maid pulled back quickly her outstretched hands, bowed and slithered inside the bedroom of the soon-to-be queen.

Flagg reached the dungeons without problems and without meeting any zealous maids. He spread the sheets on his worktable, grabbed his silver scissors to cut a small square of cloth drenched with blood and stilled. Lost in thoughts he begun to caress the stained cotton, recalling what had just happened between Tamara and him. He become hard again as he thought back about the moment he penetrated her, the way she trembled, the coppery scent of blood and afterwards her surprising arousal. Without even being conscious of what he was doing, he bent over the table until his forehead touched the sheet, smelling it, while he let the scissors go and started to rub himself through the clothes and coming at the thought of her, imagining her withering in pleasure around his member as she had done around his finger. He was left gasping and incredulous: for more than three centuries he hadn't felt the need to gratify his flash and now he seated its appetites twice in the span of few hours. He has to be careful as not to lose control of the situation: he should be the one in charge and not his lust.

§§§

Finally even the last maid left and Tamara sighed in relief. She had screamed she wanted to be left alone, in a show of hysterics that in the following months would become familiar but that for now made the maids exit her rooms in outraged whispers, leaving their work halfway done.

The princess, no: the queen, was keeping up her untied dress with both her hands. She sat gracelessly on the chair in front of her vanity table and watched her image in the mirror. The maids made a great job that afternoon: her pallid cheeks had ben livened up with some rouge and her lips coloured with red lipstick, her hair had been brushed until they shone, the ruined ends hidden by the scooped up hairstyle where the crown had been placed. It was now on that table, placed on a velvet pillow.

With the make up, the hair done and a white new dress on, one prepared for her brother's coronation and hurriedly embroidered with pearls and diamonds to be fit for a queen, she had felt pretty for the first time in her life. But then came the ceremony that had been long and boring, and the banquet where she had been unable to eat, feeling nauseous, dirty and sweating and she was sure she had been bleeding again because she felt wet and cramps gave her no respite and therefore she chased away the maids because she feared they would see the blood and the bruises while helping her undress.

She got up and begun to undress mechanically, throwing her pretty new gown on the floor that a poor maid would pick up in the morning, creased. She lifted her petticoat and lowered the undergarments, moaning in dismay at the sight of the little blood stains. At least there was a lot less blood than she had thought. She hurriedly got out of the remaining cloths, leaving on only her camisole and her stockings and went to her bathing room to wash herself at the best of her possibilities, wishing for a hot bath and promising herself she was going to get one first thing in the morning.

Once she was done, she found Flagg awaiting for her in her bedroom. He was brushing lightly her shining crown, hood low on his face. Her heart jumped to her throat as fear and excitement warred for dominance inside her. Embarrassment won the fight. She blushed to the roots of her hair, trying fruitlessly to lower her camisole to cover herself but a good portion of her tights remained bare between the hem of her camisole and the garters holding up her silk stockings. For the first time she realized the sorcerer had never before entered her rooms while she was underdressed, in spite of the fact he was used to entering them at every hour of the day, and sometimes even of the night, using the castle secret passages he knew so well. She squeaked and then she finally found her voice.

\- Turn around: I'm not dressed!

Instead of doing as she asked, he took a step towards her, bringing his hands to the hood and lowering it completely. He leered at her lustfully, eyeing her body and stopping to stare at her bosom and legs. He wetted his lips and rasped, without prying his gaze from her naked tights.

\- Today you looked like a bride, my dove. Dressed in white and jewels. You were glowing. Do you know that they are calling you Tamara the Light-bringer?

He lifted his eyes and captured hers.

\- But you and me… we know the truth. Under that image of purity there is a whore eager to spread her legs for me. I am right, I am not?

She flinched, astonished by his language: she had never before heard him utter a vulgar word; then the tears begun to spill from her eyes, slipping along her cheeks, ruining the make up, blinding her. She didn't see him moving quickly and silently, bridging the distance separating them.

\- I thought we already discussed your penchant for tears, my dove.

He drew her to him, squeezing her buttock with one hand, pushing her pelvis against the erection that had kept him from sitting comfortably for the last hours while with his other hand he gripped her hair, throwing back her head and kissing her brutally.

After some moments, that to Tamara seemed endless, he let her go and pushed her in the bed direction, giving her a slap on the butt.

\- Take off the camisole but keep on the stockings.

The queen sat on the bed edge, petrified as disbelief left to make room for the fear growing like the tide inside her. She couldn't wrap her mind around the fact he wanted her again. She didn't know if she was to feel flattered by it or humiliated by his behaviour and the words he used to describe her. In the end she came to the conclusion he was right: she had behaved exactly as a woman with loose morals when she threw herself shamelessly at him that day. Of course he was treating her as one now.

While she sat there, dazed, the sorcerer undressed, keeping only his trousers on, and joined her on the bed. He reached for the hem of her camisole and lifted it, impatiently. Tamara raised her arms, letting him bare her, obeying out of habit more than out of want. He pushed her on the bedcovers but instead of climbing on top of her as she had feared, Flagg took his time to stare at her. There had been no time for embarrassment that morning when she gave herself to him, but now she felt violated by his scrutiny and keenly aware of her many physical deficiencies. She had no desire to lay again with him but at the same time she dreaded he would find her belly too fat, her breasts too small or her hips too wide.

However the sorcerer was liking what he was seeing. He thought her breasts the perfect size for his hands, they were young and firm and they were going to grow, filling deliciously his palms. He believed her soft belly and plump hips inviting and his mouth filled with drool at the idea of leaving bite marks on her upper tights. He felt a ravenous desire to mark her, bruise her with his hands and teeth and was frustrated by the knowledge he needed to be discreet and limit himself to the skin hidden by the clothes.

\- Please, don't. I… I don't want to do it again. It still hurts.

The girls voice trembled, just as her hands were trembling while she tried to cover her breasts.

Flagg frowned, unhappy. He wanted to take her again, as he had wanted her that afternoon, when he had to prop her against his side, an arm around her waist, during her own coronation. He had been going slowly insane at the banquet, sitting at her side, seeing her smile without joy during the toasts and the congratulations from the merry crowd, knowing she had been unable to stand nor to sit still because she was still hurting from the way he took her that very morning. Now he wasn't going to let her reject him but he didn't want to use violence either, making her scream and drew the attention of a well-meaning maid. He wanted her to want him, as she had wanted him that morning, he wanted to feel again her fingers grip his hair and her arms hugging his neck as he forced his way inside her.

The sorcerer took hold of her wrists, pushing them away and trapping them over her head with one hand. Then, surprising Tamara once again, he brushed lightly her face with his free hand. With his fingertips he touched gently her lips, her neck, one breast and then the other and afterwards he went lower, between her legs, touching her as he did with the unguent. Tamara let out a moan that sounded like a sob when these long and warm fingers begun to caress her with deceptive kindness and care and the other hand let go of her wrists to move to one her breast, pinching her nipple, causing again that pleasure similar to pain. Flagg chuckled and left a trail of wet kisses on her neck, he nipped perhaps a bit too harder her shoulder and finally, with a grunt of satisfaction, he started to suck at her nipple, twisting between his fingers the other one. Tamara reacted uncontrollably: she arched her back with a moan impossible to stifle. She embraced the sorcerer, gripping his hair and keeping his face pressed against her breast while her pelvis pushed rhythmically against his hand. She felt no pain when he put a finger inside but only that pleasure she discovered with him for the first time and she had a moment of clarity in which she asked herself whether she had begun to bleed anew because she felt wet before losing all rational thoughts as she orgasmed. While she convulsed for the pleasure under him, Flagg lowered his trousers to his knees and entered her.

Tamara would have cried out if his hand hadn't silenced her quickly. This time the pleasure had been chased away brutally by the pain of penetration. Stuck speechless by the different feelings he made her felt Tamara overheard him whisper against her forehead that it was different with her and that she was his dove. The he begun to move as he had tried to do that morning, out and back in. This time Tamara knew what was happening and was relived to discover that the pain was bearable. He was hurting her and it burned but not as much as before. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he let her mouth go to grope at her breast while he lifted her knee with the other, encouraging her to widen her leg more. The girl bit on her lower lips to smother her sounds of pain but some pitiful sounding moans escaped her and they, instead of discourage him, prompted him to go faster and deeper. She laid her sweating forehead on his chest, closed her eyes tightly hoping it would be over quickly and unconsciously she drove her blunt and short nails on his shoulder blades. He gave a violent thrust, gasped and crumpled over her. He stayed still for a while, recovering his breath as he become smaller and slipped out of her.

Then he rested on his elbows and grinned in her face, a toothy, wolfish grin.

\- Did you see? In the end you did exactly as I've asked you. As I said, you were eager to spread your legs for me…

He rolled on his side, pulling up his trousers. This time, however, he didn't appear to be in any kind of hurry because he raised his arms, stretching like a satisfied cat before sitting up and address her.

\- Get up and wash your face. You make up is smeared and you look like a clown. You are pathetic.

This time the queen obeyed right away, getting off the bed and moving quickly to the bathroom. This time she could walk without bending in two for the pain although at every step she felt a stabbing at her midsection and her legs were unstable. She washed her face, scrubbing it with a washcloth to remove every trace of make up, she cleaned her thighs noticing that there was no blood and yet she was still wet and sticky and then she took off all her hairpins that stung terribly her scalp while he moved over her, squashing her against the mattress.

Flagg observed her as she exited the bathroom and reached the bed, standing there, uncertain. Her loose hair spilled over her shoulders in waves, her face was clean and reddened by the scrubbing, her cheek were still slightly round filled by her remaining baby fat. Her breasts, something he discovered a predilection for, were starting to bruise there where his greedy fingers gripped them. Her hip were widening, just as the hips of a woman should and made him think of the pleasure she gave him, how he had enjoyed thrusting into her, his hardness inside her softness, corruption inside innocence, oldness inside youth. For the first time he watched her and found her beautiful. If he thought she could have endured the experience without breaking in a million pieces he would have pushed her face down on the bad and enjoyed her buttocks.

Instead he smiled at her, ogling her silky white stockings and pointed to the center of the bed as if he was the host and she the guest in the sorcerer's bed.

\- Please, be at ease, you had a long and tiring day, my dove. Lay down.

Uncertain on what he wanted but sure it would be better to obey him, Tamara laid in the center of the bed, above the sheets she could not lift with him spread over them. For a fleeting moment she thought about wearing her nightgown, folded under her pillow, but she discarded soon the idea because she knew he would have prohibit it. Therefore she placed her head on the pillow and tried to relax, even if she felt uneasy naked under his stare. Flagg was at her side in an instant, the pleased smile he had on when she exited the bathroom still firmly in place. Tamara was amazed by it: in all her life she had seen him smile rarely and never so openly. His eyes were alight with mischievousness and he seemed nearly… playful. He gripped one of her ankle, placing her foot on his lap and using these long, pale fingers Tamara was sure she would be forever unable to look at without blushing, he undo her garter knot and rolled down the stocking. Then, keeping a steady grip on her ankle, he made her bent her leg and bowed to kiss her inner thigh. The kiss begun tender, a brush of his thin lips, then his lips gave away to his teeth and he bit her flash, sucking and leaving behind a round purple bite mark with the print of his teeth to circle it. He did the same to her other leg and the girl stifled her moan of pleasure, and pain when he bit too hard, with both her hands.

Finally he stopped and stared at his works, bent over her, kissed her a last time and got off the bed. He redressed and before lowering the hood over his face, he shoot her a parting leer. Then he went away, seemly disappearing behind a wall.

Tamara finally relaxed for real since the moment the maids were chased away. She got off the bed and put back on her underclothes, retrieved her nightgown from under the pillow and slipped it on before crawling under her bedcovers, trying to make herself as small as possible.

Now that he went away she felt tired and aching and more dirty than she felt getting out of her pretty white gown. She started to shiver uncontrollably, her body shook violently with tearless sobs. She felt ashamed, she could still feel over her skin the sensation of the sorcerer's hands, she could still feel _inside_ that thing she still had no name for and she still had to see but that she had _felt._ Hard, invading, it had hurt and shamed her because she had liked some parts of that terrible experience and he had been right calling her a whore, she was ruined, she was dirty, dirty, dirty…

Her pillow muffled her sobs while the queen, crowned as the absolute monarch of Delain not even for a day, cried bitterly, wounded in the body and in the soul by the abuse inflicted on her by the man she trusted the most in the word and who she thought she loved.

* * *

 **AN:**

Hi! First of all thank you, you solitary hero who are reading this! I translated this chapter only for you.

About Flagg: I hope you read The eyes of the dragon, so you do know that in the book Flagg is virtually asexual. He doesn't show any interest in either males nor females. So I invented everything about his preferences. About his looks: I'm reading the first book of the Dark Tower series (first version) and there Mr. King says the man in black's eyes are blue, but I have firmly in mind the picture in the book I have, the only one where Flagg is hood-less, and he has longish curly black hair, small evil looking black eyes and small wrinkles around his thin mouth and _that_ is how I picture him in my mind.

The age difference: in The eyes of the dragon Sasha merry King Roland when she is 15 and he 33 years older than her. His wedding gift for her was a dollhouse (yes, she was still playing with dolls but stopped after the marriage) and during their first night she pointed at a part of his anatomy and asked: "what's that?" because she had no idea.

Lastly, I want to rant a little. Why does she let him do something like that? Why doesn't she fight him? Why doesn't she had him thrown in prison? I want to tell you about a crime news that happened in Italy a couple of years ago. A little girl was found dead, she fell from the 8th floor. Everybody thought about an accident, only her mother screamed: murder! And she kicked up such a fuss that the police started an investigation. They discovered the child had been assaulted before her death. Then the neighbour little friend of the dead little girl and her older sister told the truth. The man their mother was living with had been abusing them for years. The last time the child has been saw alive she was with her little friend. The police imprisoned the man for raping and killing the little girl. And the two girls' mother was imprisoned too for having known about the man's abuse of her daughters and having told them to shut up and endure.

Why they never reported him? Why did they keep silent and endured? Perhaps they feared him, perhaps they loved their stepfather and their mother and didn't wanted them thrown in prison (where they belong). The hard fact however is this: they didn't say a word until a child died.

What I'm trying to describe in my fanfiction is similar. Tamara think she is in love and that Flagg loves her too. She will be silent and won't say a thing until the very end, when he would start to really hurt her and she would be unable lie to herself about his abuse and call it love.


	4. Chapter 4

Hi! I'm back again. On my gosh, I got readers! I'm happy and you spur me to finish this translation! This one is shorter but after all it is a filler as I have to make the years pass somehow. I decided that I'm going to post the third and last chapter in 2 parts, as I did with chapter 1 and 2, so you can get a faster update. Therefore there are only other 2 chapters left. Next one is going to be as bad as the previous one, just to warn you…

Ok: I don't know why but this blasted thing won't let me put a point between 2 and II in the chapter title. So use your imagination.

* * *

 **2 II**

\- I think it's enough, your Majesty.

Only two weeks passed since her father's death and her brother's incarceration and Tamara already discovered that wearing the crown wasn't as she always envisioned it.

Flagg placed lightly a hand on the queen's wrist that was reaching for the wine filled cup.

\- If you keep on, you'll be ill in front of the whole court.

That last sentence was whispered in the monarch's ear. She didn't look in his direction but let her arm go lax on the table, cleaning pointlessly her fingers on the table cloth: she hadn't even touched the food on her plate. Not the roasted potatoes or the boar nor any of the delicacies the cook prepared just for her, to try to stimulate her appetite, so low in these weeks. That evening, as all the previous ones, the queen eat only some bread and olives, more to have something to do with her hands than because she was hungry. There was the wine to fill her belly and warm her blood, red wine the queen drunk in huge quantity. The cook who once upon a time used to hide the honey buns from her fat sticky fingers, now prepared what used to be her favourite foods that were instead returned to the kitchen untouched. The illness she suffered before her coronation seemed to have changed her dietary habits: now she could eat only simple food like broth and boiled meat without feeling sick. It wasn't the only eccentricity she acquired seemly overnight: she had always been a sloppy and usually dirty child but now she has a maniacal obsession with cleanness and order. During the first week of her reign she put to work the whole castle serving stuff to sweep, mot and scrub every surface, especially her rooms. Every windows had been washed, as every curtain and tapestry. Bedsheets has to be changed every day, as her clothes and she begin every day with a morning bath. There was who whispered she would surely catch her death bathing so often, those were the people who took a bath once a year and unwillingly, and in the following months and years as the queen's health declined and she begun to be more and more pale and sickly they seemed to be proven right. But by that time nobody would care for her anymore. The cook would soon stop to tempt her with tantalizing food to get her to gain weight, the maids would stop to be scandalized by been thrown out of her rooms becoming progressively more sloppy in their service leaving the queen alone and ignoring deliberately her orders, the servants and the guards would leave her to the isolation she obviously preferred, to her hysterics and her tantrum fits. Not even the noblemen of her council would look her in the eyes, always clouded by the wine overindulgence, disgusted by the weakness displayed by the girl-queen they acclimated after king Roland The Good's death. Few, too few, people would stay by her side bound by their duty, like the always-attending cupbearer and loyal Dennis and they noticed how anxiety made her hands tremble and how the pain and fear made her pasty and worn her out.

But that was yet to come, for now everybody at court was trying to gain her favour and the most influential young men of the kingdom were trying to attract her attention in hope to sign a betrothal contract. That was making the sorcerer seethe in anger and jealousy. He expressed nothing of what he was thinking, nobody yet realized how the power balance had heavily turned from the throne to him and they have been doing their bows to the wrong person. When they recognized it, I'm sorry to relay, some would assert how it was a relief that the kingdom was run by a strong willed person while the queen spent her time drunk. There was who, in the council, had suggested a marriage was what the kingdom needed but these someone were promptly silenced by the frighteningly mellifluous voice of the royal sorcerer turned First Advisor and Lord Protector of the kingdom who was always zealous in remaining them how queen Tamara's mother had died of blood loss during a difficult childbirth and how it was better for the kingdom to have a living queen than jeopardize her life and the life of a possible future heir. And since all the queen's advisors were all men and knew nothing about babies and childbirth they would bow to the sorcerer greater knowledge. There had been someone who, more lewdly and very stupidly, suggested that what the queen really needed was a man between her legs to warm her frigid blood and quieted her hysterics. The man had died of food poisoning in the throes of a horrible pain.

§§§

That stupid boy was smiling at her _again_. The son of a baronet who believed himself so influential to get for his firstborn the second seat on the queen's left, so arrogant as to believe he could catch the queen's attention and so ambitious as to dream a crown for his son.

So foolish as to believe it possible.

The boy's attempts went right over the queen's head who watched him with unfocused eyes and gave him only empty smiles. All her attention was reserved for the golden cup in front of her, full of wine just as she liked it. It was fortuitous for Tamara that she hadn't even realized that the whelp was attempting to court her, all the sorcerer' jealousy and rage was aimed at him only: for the last hours he had entertained himself imagining how satisfying it would be to torture the brat to death, spill his blood, enjoy of his rasping cries… The boy shot an exasperated look at his father when the queen mangled his name for the umpteenth time before she got up swaying and announced it was time for her to retire. Flagg got up as well from his seat at her right, silent as a shadow, and offered her his arm. Tamara gripped it and let him escort her outside the dining hall where the feast went on undisturbed and uncaring of her leaving it.

The sorcerer, vexed by the evening events, dragged the girl to her bedroom and let her nearly asleep body fell on the bedcovers before leaving the royal rooms passing in front of the two soldiers slackly guarding its doors. The maids, upon seeing her in a drunk stupor, untied her dress and corset and laid on the bed her nightgown knowing that in the morning she would be under the covers, her dress thrown on the floor or on a chair. They knew by now that their queen couldn't bear to be touched and the first time she snap out of her drunken state and realized her maid were undressing her for the night she had screamed so loudly that the guards outside rushed in fearing an intruder. The maids had been dismissed and the two guards who saw her with only her petticoats and undershirt on, had been beheaded in the Obelisk square.

Flagg came in the small hours of the night: he wanted her awake and at least moderately sober. Tamara once nearly puked all over him and he wasn't in a hurry to repeat the experience. The voluminous white dress she wore at dinner laid on the floor along her petticoat. A silk stocking had slipped from the bed to the floor as well and the queen was snoring lightly under the covers. The sorcerer blew out the candles, undressed and pulled back the bedsheets uncovering his young lover. She was sleeping on her back wearing only a light undershirt open to show her belly and one naked breast, and her left stocking but without garter. He told her to wait for him naked and he had to admit she tried to obey even if dazed by the abuse of alcohol. The anger he nursed all night faded away and his mind, that had been full of blood and torture, filled with fantasies of moans and embraces and her trembling flash around his member.

Tamara woke abruptly, smothered under the sorcerer's body weight and pierced by spasms of pains coming from her underbelly as he moved quickly over and inside her, uncaring. With a complaining whimper she raised her hands and pushed against his chest, to try and stop him or at least push him back enough to breath but he gripped her wrists, immobilizing them at the side of her head and in few violent thrusts he came. He hadn't finished, she knew it well: soon, terribly soon, he would be ready to take her again and then again until he would be completely satisfied. Sometimes he even stayed all night just to wake her up before dawn to take her one last time. For now he left her, turning on his side to observe her. The only source of light was the fireplace but in the dimness it was easy to recognize the outline of his head and the glint of his eyes. The queen lowered with shaking hands the undershirt he lifted, closed her legs and raised to her neck the covers. She wished to scold him for not even waking her but she couldn't find the nerve to do so and then he spoke to her first.

\- Old Gorge's son kept on staring at you during the whole feast.

A hand slipped under the covers and inside her shirt, seizing one of her breasts and tightening the grip progressively until it became painful.

\- I didn't noticed it! I swear I did nothing wrong, nothing to lead him on! I don't even know who you are speaking about!

The hand become kinder and its fingers brushed and twirled the nipple, getting a timid moan of pleasure out of her.

\- And this is the only reason why I'm not angry with you.

He told her and drew near her even more, making their bodies line up to kiss her. Flagg's kisses were always invasive and aggressive and didn't call for Tamara's active participation. She merely let him do as he pleased, trying to relax as much as she could under that assault to appease him in the hopes to be rewarded with one of that fleeting moments when he became gentle with her, moments that made his cruelty bearable. He kissed her thoroughly as he finished undressing her and then his mouth joined his left hand on her breasts while his right hand went down between her legs and touched her and penetrate her and tormented her until she was incoherent and deaf to her own moans, blind to everything but the pleasure he was giving her. Afterwards, for the first time, he took her hand and guided it in the exploration of his body. He placed it over his hairless and smooth chest and then lower and Tamara finally got the chance to touch that part of him that gave her pain nearly all the times it had been inside her. The sorcerer made her wrap her fingers around it and guided her hand in the first uncertain movements and that thing went from been small and soft to hard and stiff and so big that Tamara marveled at the thought it could fit in her, at least now she knew why it hurt. Soon he was ready to do it again and hastily spread out her legs, laid over her and kissing her he penetrated her but displaying more care than before. Supporting his weight with one hand he lifted her leg to his waist and with a surge of relief she indulged in his unspoken request, wrapping her legs around him. This was the position she favoured above all others, even if in this way he trusted deeply making her sore for hours, for some reason when he let her understand he wanted to be hugged and she complied wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck, threading her fingers through his hair he become… gentle. His thrusts weren't violent, his caresses didn't leave behind bruises and sometimes he would kiss her bow, brush her hair and call her his dove. The queen lived for these moments, when he behaved like a lover and not like a torturer, when he gave her pleasure instead of pain. In these precious moments she let herself believe he loved her as she loved him.

§§§

Time lost its meaning to Tamara. Every day was the same. She would wake up and drink a cup filled with wine. She would have breakfast with a honeybun and another cup filled with wine. She would listen to the reports of the council with a cup in hand and the cupbearer who would keep it filled with wine. By lunchtime she would need to lay down to get over the first hungover of the day. The afternoons were spent in Flagg's company and the umpteenth tax law. The cupbearer would be with them but Tamara would feel uneasy anyway: the boy would leave from time to time, to get more wine and Flagg, the majority of times, would keep going as usual but sometimes he would take advantage of the cupbearer's absence to seal a kiss and to caress her leveling a burning, greedy look at her. Over time he had become cruel and uncaring of her comfort and pleasure. Tamara was starting to think he had no respect for her nor for her rule. Flagg was king in all but name, sometimes she was so drunk he had to guide her hand in signing the royal decrees. At dinner she would eat little and drink a lot of wine: being drunk was the only way she knew for coping with what was awaiting her the night after the maids left her and she laid down in bed.

Once upon a time she used to look in the mirror and see an overweight girl but now her dresses had to be continuously fixed to adapt to her weight loss, even the dresses made after her coronation. If she were to look in the mirror now she would see a girl on the way to becoming too thin, with prominent cheek bones and a face that could have been almost pretty if it weren't for the lips set permanently in a sad grimace and red rimmed eyes caused by too many sleepless nights and too many wine cups.

But Tamara had stopped looking in the mirror a long time ago. She didn't want to see the face of someone who betrayed her family for a man who covered her body in bruises and filled her eyes with tears. She believed she deserved the pain he inflicted upon her and she was prisoner of a shame loop. She dispraised herself for betraying Peter and therefore she accepted the brutal embraces of the sorcerer as a form of self punishment. She felt ashamed for what he keep doing to her and she felt ashamed for feeling ashamed: it was what she deserved and she believed, from the bottom of her tormented heart, that whatever he could do to her wasn't enough to atone for her crime. Every time she would wish for him to stop she would get angry with herself: it was what she choose when she picked Flagg over her own brother, she had prepared her bed of thorns and justice demanded for her to lay on it.

Once she asked Flagg why they didn't marry. He roared with laughter, then he kissed and took her with more ferocity than usual and afterwards, when he was still inside her, he whispered against her sweaty bow that he didn't need to marry her in order to have her.

\- But one day I will have to marry. I will need to have children to inherit the crown, what would we do then?

He answered saying she didn't need to worry about it, he would take care of the matter when the time came, that he would find her a husband who would not bother her in the bedroom. Flagg had discovered a well of burning jealousy in himself. Tamara wasn't ever going to marry, she would die long before that, and the moment he had been waiting for centuries was coming fast and swift and it would be a glorious day. She wouldn't outgrow her teen years, let alone reach the marriageable age. However the thought of a husband was enough to twist his guts. He discovered jealousy felt like a bad stomach-ache that made him cold and hot at the same time. It wasn't at all a pleasant feeling. There were days he wished with a burning passion the queen's death to get rid of the embarrassing feelings she was able to rouse in him without even trying: an inexplicable lust that would catch him in the worst moments possible and that compelled him to visit her bedroom in the death of the night or to approach her in the daylight. A foolish and dangerous behaviour. Then there were the days when he would waste his precious time in thinking of a way to spare her life whilst making the kingdom sink in the anarchy and blood. A way to take her with him when the time to leave would came, a pleasurable memento of his victory, as long as she would last. Those days were becoming more frequent and that alarmed him: it meant to put to risk centuries of careful plotting and deceptions. And yet… In those days he would touch her surreptitiously in the daylight thinking about how nice it would be to do the same without having to hide his lust for her and he would call her "dearest" and "my dove" while in bed. During the worst days, the ones he wished her dead, remembering his foolish contingency plans made him rage and drove him to unwind his fury on his lover, becoming brutal in his lovemaking, his eyes shining with cruel malice as he licked Tamara's tears from her cheeks, a feral grin on his face to betray his inhuman nature.


	5. Chapter 5

**3.I**

In the last days, weeks really, Tamara had been unable to sleep well. Nightmares tormented her and Flagg was worse than usual: he seemed to switch between short burst of satisfaction and long phases of frustration and those would translate for her in nights of torture. In the last three days she had slept for only a couple of hours a night and even her afternoon naps had been sacrificed to the state meetings to discuss the problems caused by the "exiles", as they like to call themselves, who choose to brave the wildness of the kingdom forests to paying the taxes or confronting the executioner's axe.

Honestly, Tamara had had enough.

She was past tiredness and on the verge of a mental and physical break down. She wanted to sleep, a night free of nightmares and free of Flagg. Was it really too much to ask? Therefore that evening she drunk less than usual, still enough to make a grown man kneel over, and after been lead to her bedroom by the sorcerer she changed in her night clothes, put her dressing gown on and left her rooms. Using the secret passage her lover was going to use later to come to her, she went to the only place she thought she could sleep peacefully in: the secret room she used to spy her father from.

Out of habit she opened the peepholes and peeked in her late father's sitting room, smiling to herself nostalgically. Then she curled up on the floor. The wooden panels covering the room interior kept the environment warm and dry and the barking of her father's old dogs coming from downstairs was comforting, taking her back to a time of her life she once thought unhappy but that now seemed to her carefree and innocent. She told herself she was going to close her eyes for a short time, just a couple of hours and then she would go back to her bedroom long before Flagg's arrival. She fell asleep.

Tamara woke up from the first serene and resting sleep in a long time to a living nightmare and that nightmare had Flagg's face and voice.

On his right palm a sphere of light was hovering, lightening up the enraged sorcerer's expression: his lips were tightly pressed together and his eyes full of fury. His voice was trembling with a barely suppressed anger when he spoke to her.

\- I came to you tonight, as every other night in the last five years and for the first time you weren't where you were supposed to be. I thought… I don't know what I thought, what I do know is that I searched the castle for you in vain. I thought about alerting the guards of your disappearance but first I tried to find you with magic and the magic brought me here.

Tamara crawled to a corner, shaking and whimpering in terror.

\- What were you trying to do? Hide? Here? Did you think I wouldn't find you? You have been a good girl so far and I never punished you, perhaps I should have been sterner, perhaps this act of rebellion is my fault too.

The sphere of light floated to the ceiling where its cold light cast Flagg's shadow over the crunched form of the queen who started to shake uncontrollably while the sorcerer let his cloak fell on the floor and begun to undress, unhurriedly.

\- This is a punishment Tamara and its purpose is to teach you not to hide from me ever again, not to run from me ever again. Not to refuse me _ever_. This part of the castle is isolated in this time of the night, only your father's dogs can hear you and they are half-deaf. Therefore feel free to scream, actually…

He kneel, naked, in front of her and seized her by her throat, drawing her near.

\- Do scream, I _want_ you to and remember to express, convincingly, your sorrow for worrying me needlessly.

Then he pushed her on the floor, grabbing her hair by the nape and pressing her face against the floor. With his free hand he piled up her nightgown and dressing gown over her back, baring her from waist down.

Flagg had never taken her from behind, it had seemed too impersonal, after all he liked watching her in the face and being hugged by her.

Now he positioned himself between her parted knees and, wrapping his arm around her waist, he forced her up and against his body, entering brutally her in with a violent thrust. Tamara screamed shrilly and for long and then she gave a shaking sob, speechless for the pain. He tugged hard at her hair and she had to bend her head backward, baring her throat and arching her back to mitigate the pressure on her backbone. It felt as if he was on the verge of snapping her neck. She wheezed, scrabbling with her hands and sobbing hard, trying to grasp Flagg's wrist. He allowed her to lower her head and to fall on all fours. Then he started to move, exiting completely before thrusting back inside, repeating the motion as forcibly as possible.

Tamara supported herself on trembling hands, at every thrust her knees scraped on the wood floor and only Flagg's arm around her waist was keeping her upwards. The queen shrieked at every thrust from the sorcerer and, when he reminded her with a whisper that he was still waiting for her apologies, she begun to beg.

\- Please!

\- I'm sorry!

\- Please!

\- Forgive me!

\- Stop!

\- Pleasepleaseplease…..!

Tamara could see her tears drift along her nose and then drip on the floor, alongside the saliva she couldn't swallow anymore. Unable to think, drowning in a river of pain she would have said anything, done anything he asked her, just to make him stop. Then he bent over her, covering her with his bulk, pushed aside her hair from her neck, opened wide his mouth and bit her hard as he came. He bit hard enough to break the skin with his front teeth, filling his mouth with her blood.

Finally the tension gripping him since he went to her rooms finding them empty, melted away. He relaxed, letting her go and falling on her who crumbled to the floor, unable to sustain the added weight of his body. He lapped at the wound made by his teeth, to collect all drops of blood. She wasn't moving nor whimpering: she had fainted. Feeling satisfied he brushed his nose against her sweaty hair to chase after the scent of her fear and pain. He didn't retreated from her body: it wasn't over, as soon as she came back to consciousness he would start all over.

When Tamara opened her eyes again, she found herself crushed on the wood floor, her hands trapped beneath her own body, her legs spread and Flagg's weight that prevented her from drawing breath. She gasped, tying ineffectively to breath and the little air she manage to fill her lugs with escaped her in a long whimper of pain. She often thought he was hurting her before, but now these embraces seemed almost tender in comparison.

\- Welcome back, Tamara.

His whisper in her ear made her shudder in horror at the realization he was still inside her and that he was hard again.

\- Don't! It hurts too much!

\- Are you ordering me around?

The sorcerer's pale fingers tightened around her throat, his palm at her nape. He jerked her upwards and backwards, getting back on his knees and forcing her to follow him. Tamara begin anew to sob and cry: when was it going to end?

\- Please…

He started again to move, the only places their bodies were touching were his hand gripping her nape and there where he was pushing into her.

\- Not like this… I'm sorry, I'll never do it again… have mercy!

He picked up his pace but he was less brutal than before. However Tamara didn't noticed the difference: the pain had made her numb. In a last effort to stop her punishment, she tried to gain his favour.

\- Don't do this to me…I love you…

He stopped for a moment before resuming with a wild growl. He tightened his grip on her throat, rearranging his fingertips and pressing down on two specific points next to the windpipe. Tamara wished she could loosen his grip on her throat but she was terrified by the possibility of him ending up chocking her if she lifted her hands from the floor. Her heart was beating frenetically and she could feel it pounding quicker and quicker in her chest like a drum until, all at once, her sight became blurry and she fainted again.

Flagg saw her crumble under him; he followed her unconscious body to the ground but careful not to crush her this time, instead he supported his weight with an arm whilst maintaining the pressure on Tamara's carotids.

He learned that little trick centuries before: blocking the blood afflux to the brain, the victim would faint and if one didn't released the grip then the person would die. The beautiful thing was that afterwards there were no signs of suffocation because the victim _could_ breathe but ironically would die for lack of oxygen to the brain. Flagg liked to strangulate the women he raped, he got a rush when they lost the strength to fight back and would give up struggling, becoming still and unresponsive beneath him. At the beginning he had had the habit to close off the trachea but sometimes he would grip it too tightly and crush it, then he discovered that trick and started to use it to "kill" his victims over and over. He loved the way they would wiggle hopelessly and the terror seizing them as they asked themselves if it was going to be the time he wouldn't release their throat.

This time too he came quickly but, contrary to all other times, it wasn't as satisfying. He found difficult to believe the chit's nerve. Love him! What madness, what stupid, foolish idea she got in her thick head. He realized the grip on her throat, checking to make sure the blood was flowing again and then he got up, leaving her on the ground with her naked legs spread out and the white nightgown trapped under her collapsed form. He was putting on his boots when she gave signs of regaining consciousness, moving weakly and then turning on her side, groaning and hugging her sides with her arms, curling up in a fetal position.

Once he was dressed again, with his hood lowered on his face, he kneeled beside Tamara, covered her up and picked her, carrying her in his arms effortlessly. This time she didn't wrap her arms around his neck looking for comfort, instead she curled up more, trying to touch him as little as possible. He took her back to her bedroom, divested her of her dressing gown and put her in bed. Then he sat at her bedside, seized her face and forced her to meet his eyes, something she had purposely avoided doing up to that point.

\- Do you know why I've hurt you, Tamara?

His voice was again kind, as kind were his fingers holding her chin.

\- Because I've been disobedient.

Tamara's voice trembled, her whole body was trembling under the covers.

\- Exactly. Right answer, good girl. Don't force me to punish you again, all right?

He got up to leave but she seized his sleeve.

\- Please… could you give me something for the pain, please?

He sat back on the bad and absently he caressed her hair as you would do with a scared child, or a dog.

\- No, Tammy. The pain is part of the punishment but since you seemed to understand the lesson you have the permission to stay in bed today, to rest. I don't think you'll have the strength to get up, in less than one hour is going to dawn. Rest, sleep and tonight, when I'll be back I'll give you the unguent I gave you the day of your coronation. Is that good?

He kissed her brow and then he left her.

Tamara spent the day abed and alone because she didn't wish to see anybody. She didn't sleep because every time her body would relax on the brick of sleep, her mind would take her back to the secret passage, her face pressed against the floor and the sorcerer's grip tight around her throat. She didn't drink any alcohol because she was afraid of falling asleep. When he finally came back it was a relief, even if it hurt terrible when he took her and he had to silence her scream and hiccups with a hand covering her mouth. But afterwards he gave her the unguent and the pain went away and Tamara, relived the punishment was over, laid against his side, put her head on his shoulder and when later on he took her again she hugged him tight and it didn't hurt anymore.

The bruises on her knees and throat were going to take weeks to fade.

§§§

Dennis had been prince Peter's attendant, his own father instructed him all his life preparing him to became the butler of a king. Everything changed the day he found the smoking mouse in prince Peter's room, putting into motion the chain of events that led his prince to his cell on the top of the Needle. Since that day he stopped being the attendant of the future king. The princess had had a small army of maids to care for her and Dennis found himself going down on the castle servant hierarchy. However no maid could deliver the royal decrees nor carry mails or military dispatches to the queen and young Dennis took back some of the duties that would have been his had Peter became king.

Therefore he had a privileged post from which observe helplessly the progressive work of self-destruction the queen threw herself into with wild abandon. The weight of the crown is crushing her, he often thought and sometimes he said it aloud as he tried to defend her at the tavern where he stopped by to drink a pint at the end of a stressful day. He saw the expression of abject desperation on the queen's face long before recognizing it on the face of the beggars who had begun to crowd the capitol streets. However it was impossible to explain to the desperate population that whatever ailment was plaguing them was just the reflection of the one ailing the queen. Dennis didn't know the cause but he knew, viscerally, that the evil, or Evil, tormenting queen Tamara was the same that was dragging the whole kingdom to the point of no return and to the brink of the precipice. His instinct, the same one that pushed him so many years previously to extinguish the fire in the prince's room and then to run to his father, was screaming at him that only helping the queen to heal the kingdom could be saved and be made whole again.

During these days, the last ones of Tamara the Light-bringer's rule, Dennis' job consisted in carrying missives, ushering in guests and officials and even filling in for the cupbearer. The queen would drink, a lot and at every time, long after the end of the cupbearer's service.

From the day Flagg left the castle to lead the army in the hunt of the noble exiles, the young queen picked up the habit of dulling her senses enough to fall asleep and therefore she ordered Dennis to stay at her side to fill her cup and to go and fetch more wine. Dennis spent those nights curled up on the rug in front of the fireplace while the queen slumbered on an armchair and consequently he found out that no maid stayed with her at night and that the bedroom for her personal maids was unused. The spacious royal quarters were silent at night and totally isolated, the two soldiers guarding its entrance were five closed doors afar and therefore unable to hear the queen shouting in her sleep, gripped by horrible nightmares, or to run to the her aid in the time of need if it came. Dennis would blush every time for the impropriety of the situation and lamented with his mother the lacking of female servants who could and should take his place in serving their queen inside her bedroom.

Then there was something he never said to anybody: the pitiful scene he was witness to during his sober vigil. The queen would drift inevitably into a state of stupor because of the alcohol abuse and then, under the powerless watch of the young butler who didn't dare to touch her not even to wake her up, she suffered from unspeakable nightmares. The poor girl would start crying and moaning rising the volume of her wails until she was screaming and fighting against the invisible enemy who was tormenting her in her dreams. Her screams would became words and pleas to stop, that he was hurting her, appeals to her brother Peter to help her and then her weeping would be smothered by her own two hands gripping her throat. And a name, repeated sometime in fear, sometime in a begging tone, a name that would make shiver of fear run down Dennis' back as if saying it aloud could summon its owner. Flagg. Flagg please. Flagg stop. Flagg don't.

There was another thing that Dennis had never disclosed to anybody, something that made him tremble in fear, something that, the first time he saw it, made him tremble in anger and indignation in addition to cry like a powerless baby.

Queen Tamara was known as an incorrigible drunk who brought the kingdom on the brink of collapse but she was also renowned for her chastity. It was said that nobody had ever saw her necked, not even her maids, that she insisted in changing her underclothes and bath by herself. Her white maidenly gown were long-sleeved and the necklines were so high as to cover her throat entirely. They were the epitome of modesty and the diamonds adorning them were the purest. It was like she wanted to maintain, at least with her looks, that image of hope that on the day of her coronation made her earn her nickname. But during those terrible nights Dennis was forced to be her cupbearer, the low neckline of the nightgown and the dressing gown opened on the front with its wide sleeves let him see another more appalling truth. The stupor caused by the wine coupled with the state of agitation she got during her nightmares, would allow Dennis to see parts of the queen's body nobody had seen in years. The dressing gown would open and the nightgown would bare to his astonished eyes the black and blue bruises, bite-marks and handprints on the base of her pallid throat. The same he could see on the forearms and wrists left uncovered by her dressing gown wide sleeves. Dennis' father had been a good man and a good husband and only twice in his life he raised his hands on his wife in a fit of rage and in both occasion there was no comparison with the marks marring the young queen's skin. Somebody was beating the queen and Dennis realized at once that in the kingdom there was only one person so powerful as to physically attack the queen, only one person so scary that even she would be too terrified to denounce. The same dark person she tried to flee from in her nightmares and that she begged with a broken voice to stop hurting her: Flagg. But poor Dennis who had never ever kissed a girl, couldn't imagine the extent of that abuse. He didn't realize that the black fingerprints on her neck have been made by hands pinning Tamara to the bed while their owner was brutally abusing her and that the bite-marks had been made to spill her blood and brand her like cattle.

That night, as all the previous ones, Dennis had been summoned to the queen's bedroom and poured her a river of wine. That night, unlike the previous ones, over the capital was raging a storm the like people had not seen in years, since the last days of the previous king Roland's reign. The queen drunk as usual, maybe even more than usual, but instead of losing consciousness she slipped in a kind of day-dreaming. She watched the fire with unblinking eyes and muttered to herself unintelligibly. As the hours passed by his eyelids became heavy and Dennis dozed off only to be suddenly startled by the scraping of the armchair on the floor. The queen had jumped to her feet. Her eyes were wide open but unseeing and her pastry face was contorted by an unreadable grimace.

\- Follow me.

She growled with a gravelly tone and then she slipped inside a secret passage that opened on the fireplace side, lightening her way with a candle. The bewildered attendant followed her, unable to disobey a direct order nor to abandon his mistress. The light from the fireplace grew dim at his back as he followed the white specter of the queen's dressing gown through the darkness to the secret passage exit in a servant corridor behind an age stained mirror. Worried and getting colder and colder in that frosty winter night, he followed on the heels of the queen through half the castle, managing somehow to avoid all the night patrols. She led him to a narrow and seldom used corridor, turned to him and, still suing that gravelly and frightening voice that seemed to imitate a male tone, she snarled.

\- Fourth stone from the bottom after the chipped one. Quickly: press it!

Poor Dennis moved to do as she said but she was quicker and pressed on the indicated stone, activating the hidden mechanism that made the wall open like a door.

\- Inside, you foolish girl!

Tamara shoved inside the dark threshold the butler who realized she had, for all that time, given orders to herself using someone else voice. Dennis finally recognize in the angry inflection used by the queen the sorcerer's cruel voice and stuttered in fear as she pushed him inside, picturing in his mind horrifying scenarios in which Flagg himself was waiting for him in that narrow space, to kill him horribly, so great Dennis was afraid of him and in awe of his magical powers. But it wasn't so, fortunately for the young man the secret room was empty: it was a narrow space covered by wood panels and the feeble candle carried by the queen was enough to lighten it completely.

Tamara's mind had been transported back to the night she spied on her father for the last time and her imagination, fueled by the storm, was making her re-experience it. Dennis's presence mislead her memory already addled by the wine into confusing that terrible night with the first time the sorcerer showed her the secret room.

The girl put a hand on the man's back and guided him to the end of the room where there was a metal bar covering two peepholes.

\- This is going to be our secret, Tammy.

She whispered in his ear and Dennis felt unsettled by her proximity. Tamara pressed him with his back against the wall using her body whilst she moved the bar and watched over his shoulder from the peepholes. Dennis was still, his anxious breathing moving the queen's light hair. He didn't dare to speak, afraid the unexpected sound of his voice would wake her up. For the same reason he didn't move even if it would have been easy to escape her grasp. It took Dennis some time to realize that the sound of distress he was hearing weren't his but the queen's. She was crying and then she said words that nearly made Dennis faint for their severity and for what they implied.

\- Well boy, what did she said?

The now retired High Judge watched Dennis with a relentless gaze and the young man asked himself if he was able to read the whole story in his own scared eyes.

After the night of the storm, Dennis spent days just to decide what to do with the knowledge acquired and afterwards he lost more time just to find the courage to act on his resolve and go to the retired High Judge Peyna, the one who presided over the fatal trial that condemned prince Peter for parricide and regicide, and the only one whom Dennis believed never shown any fear of the royal sorcerer.

\- The queen called out for her father and begged him not to drink the wine brought by Flagg because it was poisoned.

The judge felt the weight of the years oppress his shoulders and making him lower his head until his chin touched his chest. All that time, all these years, lost forever, stolen from an innocent man he condemned based on circumstantial evidences and boyish tears.

\- Are you sure you heard correctly, my boy?

Peyna's voice sounded tired and he seemed aged ten years at once.

\- Yes sir. From the peepholes, I could see clearly the old trophy room of king Roland, the fireplace and the armchair where the old king used to rest. From that point of view the queen could easily see both prince Peter and _him_ bring the wine to the king.

There was no need to ask who _him_ was. The old man stared fixedly at the young man who started to fidget and looked away and a spark lightened in Peyna's dulled eyes. He hadn't been a successful judge for nothing: he had always been able to recognize a witness who's eager to spill it all but is too afraid, or too embarrassed to do it.

\- What else? Speak boy!

Dennis has always been a steadfast servant and therefore he found impossible to disobey the judge.

\- She, the queen… after closing the peepholes and before passing out on the floor crying, she…

Peyna saw the boy gather his wit to find the strength to finish his tale. Honestly he didn't believed possible for him to reveal something worse than what he already disclosed, but Dennis would soon prove him wrong.

\- She kissed me, sir.

A heavy silence fell, broken only by the logs crackling in the fireplace.

\- Explain.

\- The queen, she kissed me on the mouth and… and I don't think she… I don't think that she was kissing _me_ , in her mind.

Silence fell again and this time Dennis cracked and reduced to tears, he ended up telling what he believed he would never say.

\- _He_ beats her, sir. Under her clothes, not that I ever saw her without sir, only that… at night, when she wears only the dressing gown over her nightgown… it leaves her neck and forearms bare you see, and … and… oh sir! She's covered in bruises: handprints and bite-marks. How could he do something like that to the queen?

He confessed faintly and the stone crushing Peyna's chest became impossibly heavier.

\- And so… this is how he dominate her. For a long time I've asked myself the nature of his hold over her. I did knew she feared him but, after all, everybody fear him. I would have never believed…! Gods help us and help that poor girl no matter her wrongdoings and guilty silences.

* * *

AN:

Once I was watching a movie, I don't remember which one, and a character said: children are like dogs: if you beat them, they would think the fault is theirs. Tamara isn't a child nor a dog but the idea is the same.


	6. Chapter 6

I'm sorry for the mistakes that you'll find as I had trouble translating the grammar right: it's not easy to write the "future in the past" tense… If I got it wrong I just hope you'll understand anyway.

AN: For future reference: *1 foot= 0,3048 meters (therefore 90 meters should be more than 270 feet while 30 meters should be 90 feet but I've never been good at math).

 **3.2**

Peter had worked at his escape with growing urgency in the last five years of his imprisonment. His plan was simple but clever: pull out threads from the napkins coming with his three daily meals, braid them together in a thin but strong rope using the loom of his mother's dollhouse that he had Peyna deliver to him and climb down the ninety meters* separating his cell window from the cobblestones of the Niddle square. What he was going to do once he was fee again he still didn't know, but he was going to improvise and to hope for the best.

The day his sister was crowned queen of Delain he had watched the ceremony from the single small window of his prison. He took notice of the way Tamara had clung into Flagg and he knew it couldn't be a good omen for the beginning of her rule.

When he found the golden heart-shaped pendant belonging to Leven Valara and the letter he wrote with his blood in which he accused Flagg the sorcerer of killing his wife and framing him for her murderer, trapping him in the cell at the Niddle top, Peter felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, realizing how much danger all Delain was in. He had had confirmation of the evil nature of the monster whispering in his sister's ear, a monster who five centuries earlier had plotted to take out of the picture an inconvenient heir to the throne to put in charge Alan the Mad, a king who had dragged the kingdom on the brink of destruction.

The rhythm kept by the executioner axe, faster and faster in the following years until it become nearly wild during the fifth year of his imprisonment, convinced him to increase the quantity of stolen threads, tattering his napkins edges and making him live in constant fear that the news of such anomaly would reach the sorcerer.

The rope was still to short but he felt he couldn't wait to finish it. Something in his bones, like a presentiment, was telling him that his time was ebbing away fast and this feeling, coupled with the nightmare he kept on having every night about Flagg bowed over a shining crystal whispering maliciously his name, was pushing him to try to escape. He could only hope that Dennis and Ben, his best friend since childhood, would be able to come out with something in case things went wrong.

Peter couldn't know how right his instinct was: some minutes before his escape attempt Flagg was going to foresee his plan and to rush to the Niddle main door armed with his double axe, the one he used to do his bloody job many centuries before when he was called Bill Hinch the most fared and bloodthirsty executioner in the history of Delain. Dennis and Ben, along with Naomi and her trustworthy dog Frisky who guided Peter's best friend from the exiled rebels camp to the capitol, would save the prince's life by piling up at the tower feet a heap of royal napkins, the same ones that Peter had used for years to create his mean of escape, breaking his fall when the rope would snap at thirty meters* from the cobblestones.

But neither Peter who had weaved and fretted for five years nor Flagg who in the course of the same five years had enjoyed an absolute power over the kingdom by exerting an absolute control over the queen rising the taxes to absurd levels and executing summarily any who dared to opposite him, could have known how events were going to unfold.

§§§

When Flagg came back empty-handed from his hunt of the rebels, Tamara panicked. The sorcerer had the habit to vent on her skin his frustrations and the queen pictured for herself nights of pain and tears, perhaps even been taken from behind with Flagg's hand around her throat strangling her. However, once alone he informed her with a raspy voice that he wasn't going to visit her that night and neither the following one. The cold he suffered camping in the humid and frigid forests caused him to catch a bad cold and a light fever. Moreover, since he didn't find the rebels there where they should have been, he begun to have a recurring nightmare he could never remember upon waking: he woke up screaming, his hands clutching his left eye that would burn terribly. Therefore he didn't wanted to succumb to sleep and have that dream in her bed: he didn't want her to realize he had bad dreams like everybody else.

Flagg was never ill and so that fever was like the insult added to the injury of not finding that trice damned riffraff composed by noblemen in exile and rebels. The cold and the fever had been easily cured once he had had open access to his laboratory again but the rage and the uneasiness tormenting him were more difficult to dispel and he just knew that if he were to go to Tamara's bed he would hurt her a lot worse than usual and, he decided, it was better to avoid something like that. The sorcerer didn't chose to spare the girl as an act of kindness but because he realized he had used her in a particular dreadful way lately and she had begun to flinch when he came too near, even when in public, and to tremble in fear. Sooner or later her bizarre behaviour was bound to be noticed and somebody would start asking questions. It was better to wait a little and try to be gentler with her when in bed next time.

The Tower of the High Gods crushed to the ground with a deafening roar that however didn't disturb the agitated sleep of the capitol citizens who had lived all day through the worst snow storm as far back as people could remember. In the same moment Tamara opened her eyes in a dark room and felt her heart jump in her throat, beating madly, as she recognized the place she was in as the secret room beside her father's trophy room. She was alone. Immediately she looked around for Flagg but soon she remembered he couldn't be there and why.

The sorcerer had been strangely attentive lately, he stayed in her room only for some hours before going back to his dungeon and that night he had already visited her. There wasn't any danger for a repeat performance of the disaster happened the first time she woke up in the secret passage. That however didn't explain why _she_ was _there_.

Tamara's teeth rattled, in part for the cold but mostly because she must have got up and sleep-walked as it happened while Flagg has been away. Tonight however she didn't want to go back to her bed, nor to stay there curled up only few steps from where he… This time the shivers had nothing to do with the cold. She got up to her feet and, realizing she was wearing only a nightgown that left her throat bared, she tried to cover herself fruitlessly hunching her back and shoulders, hugging herself and feeling ridiculously naked. She exited the secret passage and instead of turning right toward her rooms, she turned left treading the corridor silently as if expecting to meet a serving girl or a soldier on patrol. But at that hour of the night all good serving girls were nestled in their beds, the ones a little less good in the bed of someone else and all guards instead of doing their rounds were most likely passed out drunk somewhere with a roaring fire. She opened the door leading to her father's trophy room, sneaked inside and closed it at her back. The room was still the same as five years before, when her father had been king; it was only a little more dirty because the maids appointed with its cleaning would dust it only sporadically since it wasn't used anymore. Her father's armchair was still in front of the fireplace, his mead stained dressing gown still hung behind the door and Tamara put it on with a reviled sigh and then she rushed to light up the fire, adding the logs and the fuse that had been left piled orderly next to the fireplace even after all those years. She sat on the armchair and stretched out her arms and feet towards the fire that was soon going to warm the room and then she brushed absentmindedly her fingertips over the mead stains.

The dressing gown still smelled like her father, like cheap mead and old man, and to everybody else it would have been a slightly unpleasant smell but to Tamara it was like being welcomed home after a long absence. Wearing her father's dressing gown, sitting on his armchair that in the years had made a light hollow where the old king used to sit, she had the impression of being wrapped in one of her father's sporadic and much desired hugs, feeling safe, really safe, after a too long time. With her eyes reflecting the light, the dressing gown collar raised to her nose to breathe through the cloth, Tamara reflected and remembered.

The queen had always knew that it had been Flagg and not Peter who poisoned her father, even if she had never wanted to admit it to herself. Roland's shade visited her often in her nightmares, accusing her of having left him to die, of having plotted with Flagg to steal the throne from the rightful heir and sometime Peter himself would appear, in chains and with his face filled with disgust, at their father's side. Tamara would try to explain but then her father would start to burn and she would wake up in tears. And those were the more pleasing nightmares, the worst were the ones with the sorcerer as main character. Thinking about Flagg made her came to mind his strange behaviour. Since his return from his hunt of the rebels, he had seemed cold and indifferent, or perhaps she was mistaking his lack of cruelty for lack of interest. When he finally came to her, after almost two weeks of abstinence, she had thought him to be wild and brutal but instead he had been gentle and for the first time in months he caressed her softly and kissed her and he tried to give her pleasure but she had been too scared and too tense. Therefore he, angry and frustrated, had just climbed on her and took her fast and violently, his laboured breath hot against her brow, clutching her wrists so tightly that she had whimpered in pain.

He hadn't looked her in the face, nor kissed her and Tamara had just laid limp under him, thinking only of not tensing up and keep on breathing because at every thrust he crushed her against the bed with his weigh, stealing her breath. Once done he redressed without saying a word and went away, contrary to what has been his habit. The same thing happened the following nights with the only difference being that he stopped trying to give her pleasure. In the course of their relationship, Tamara had felt rarely loved, often hurt and most of the times mistreated but only now she felt used and she believed that under him there could be any woman and that it didn't matter to him that there was _her_ , Tamara.

That night had been different, unfortunately. Flagg had tried to pleasure her again but since his attempt was again unsuccessful, he become violent. He had hissed that if he couldn't give her pleasure he would give her pain. He had bitten her throat and the juncture with the shoulder, leaving bruises and bite marks and then he had turned her on her belly. That made Tamara struggle, crying and begging for him not to hurt her, that she didn't like to do it that way, that she would have done everything if only he was to stop. He hadn't listened. Flagg had pressed her head against the pillow, letting her turn her face enough to breath and Tamara had sobbed in relief when the hand gripping her throat had moved to her right wrist while his other hand seized her left. She had tried to get up but he had crushed her with his bulk blocking her escape. Then he begun moving, altering bites on her neck to her right shoulder and she stayed still, letting him do as he pleased, weeping silently and her tears had been licked away by him.

The queen dried her cheeks quickly, ordering herself to stop being foolish. She had the remaining night to herself, she could try to sleep wrapped up in her father's smell and perhaps she wasn't going to have nightmares, perhaps she was even going to dream about that time her father taught her to use the bow and had shouted his prise when she scored a nearly direct hit at her first try. Her gaze fell on Niner's stuffed head, which eyes she had spied her father through. The king's bow and the renowned Foe-Hammer that killed Delain last dragon hung over the beast head and it was rumoured that the arrow still preserved the blood heat of its last kill. Tamara was certain that holding those two relics she would be assured sweet dreams and therefore she dragged a chair to the wall, climbed it and took the bow and the dart from their supports, lingering to peek into Niner's glass eye. All she was able to see was her own reflection. Then she put back the chair, sat on the armchair in front of the fire, curled up and closed her eyes with a tentative smile.

§§§

Peter was running, followed closely by Ben, Naomi and Dennis, the odd group ending with a growling Frisky. The pounding of the metal studded soles of Flagg's boots and his horrible howls chased them in the hallways. Contrary to what one could suppose, Peter wasn't running away but he had in mind a specific goal: his father's bow and Foe-Hammer that Peter knew were kept inside his father's old trophy room, hanging above the beast stuffed head.

He threw open the door without stopping, bursting in the room and diving to the left, reaching up with his hands only to become still in front of the empty supports. Ben and Dennis bolted the entrance but they had just the time to move aside before the sorcerer's magic empowered fist stroke the door, uprooting it from its hinges and making it explode into the room.

Flagg entered with the force of the hurricane, his face was uncovered and his sneer reflected his satisfaction at having cornered his prey, the huge double axe hold steadily in his hands looked eager to spill more blood.

Peter saw him coming toward him and he had just the time to feel relief at the thought the sorcerer seemed, for the time being, willing to ignore his friends. Then the prince raised his closed fist from which Valera golden locket swung and wielded it as a talisman to ward off evil.

\- I know you, demon. I know what you are and what you did. You killed my father and it wasn't the first time you plotted from the shadows!

The sorcerer stilled at the sight of the shining trinket.

\- You recognize it, I can see it on your face. You killed my father as you have killed Valera's wife. For a too long time you oppressed this kingdom.

Peter stood erect and in that moment, backed by the rightful authority given to him by his heritage and the title that was due to him by birth and natural inclination, he spoke to the sorcerer known as Flagg with the voice of dozens of Delain kings and queens.

\- I command you, demon! Leave this kingdom now and forever!

The sorcerer seemed shaken by the proclamation issued by the true king but he soon resumed his self-confidence and his sneer.

\- You command nothing, little prince.

He mocked Peter.

\- Soon your head, along the heads of your accomplices, will adorn the city walls. The crows will eat your eyes out and the worms will feast with your brain. You did me a favour escaping, you gave me the excuse I needed to have the pleasure to kill you, you little bastard.

From a corner of the room came Naomi's choked exclamation.

\- And the nice thing is that I will be praised for it, your own sweet little sister will thank me. I tell you this: I'll make sure she will show me her appreciation for my deed in our bed.

There was no need to explain to Peter the nature of his relationship with the queen but Flagg couldn't resist: he had to pour salt into the wound, he had to shake him with a revelation as shocking as Peter's one about Valera has been. He then observed with deep satisfaction the prince's face becoming pasty.

\- What do you mean, you monster!

Flagg's smirk oozed lust.

\- The day of her crowning, I deflowered your dear sister. You should have seen how she offered herself to me, like a thank you gift for putting her on the throne. Every night since, I had had her and I took my pleasure from her. She's so sweet, so easily to bruise. She cries and bleeds and moans like a slut underneath me. She's so pliant and obliging, she does everything I tell her to do without breathing a single word, mine in body and soul. I feel so comfortable between her legs that I'm thinking about taking her with me once the kingdom will end up in flames. I do think I deserve a little something for having endured that imbecile of your father and your meddling mother and I will take your sister for as long as she'll last. And the amazing thing is that you can do nothing about it because now you'll die and the whole kingdom will rejoice because, you see, the whole kingdom believes you killed your father and, even if I was the one who did it and it gave me great pleasure and I cheered as the poison burned him alive… well, only you were seen giving him wine.

From behind Peter, from her father's armchair left in the shadow by the fireplace light, came the queen's soft voice.

\- You are wrong. Someone saw you: me.

Everybody's eyes turned to the small figure huddled on the armchair. Flagg took a step forward, toward Tamara, every fiber of his being focused on the girl he had controlled for years, owned in body and soul and whom he had abused every night. The girl who had being at the center of every thought, dream and meager act of kindness he had conceded to someone in the last millennia.

The bloodthirsty executioner axe lowered. Flagg's heart, that had beaten happily the rhythm of his malign joy, lost a beat in his chest and then it seemed to sink into his gut.

\- Tamara? My dove, what are you doing here?

Peter, at the sound of the female voice coming behind him that had filled the sorcerer with dread, turned to the fireplace and the armchair where his sister was curled up and at the beginning he didn't recognize her. The woman illuminated by the roaring fire was minute and blonde-haired and the dancing flames cast dark shadows over her throat and front left bared by her white nightgown neckline. She was huddled up in their father's old dressing gown, the face framed by thin hair was hollow cheeked and her sunken eyes had dark circles under them. Her plump lips, the only thing inherited by their mother, were trembling. In her lap she hold king Roland's long bow and arrow. Only the whispered question uttered by the sorcerer had let Peter identify that apparition as his little sister.

Tamara raised to her knees and fit the arrow to the bow. The Foe-Hammer was hot against her cheek and that heat was surely the reason for the tears running from her eyes as she pulled the string.

\- You never loved me.

The arrow flied from the bow, the vitrified tip hit the center of Valera's heart-shaped locket that was snatched from its golden chain with a sweet-sounding jingle, crossed the trophy room and drove itself into Flagg's left eye, the same one that had ached every time he woke up from that nightmare he could never remember. The sorcerer brought both hands to his face, screaming in pain and dropping the axe that shattered as it fell on the stone floor. He affixed his remaining eye on Tamara, watching her with incredulity and then he turned his sight to Peter, his face contorting in a mask of hate, before disappearing, suddenly. The arrow and the locked coated in smoking black blood floated in mid-air for a moment before crushing down, leaving a sizzling heart- shaped imprint on the stone.

Peter moved toward his sister who had gotten up from her perch and was now sobbing as she hugged the bow to herself, keeping her face downwards. The prince tried to hug her, to give her comfort, because years has passed since he saw her last, because his heart was bursting with pity and sorrow but as soon as his hands touched her bony shoulders, Tamara jerked away with a shrill cry, almost falling down on the armchair. Peter couldn't understand her reaction and it was Dennis who explained it to him.

\- The queen doesn't want to be touched, never and by anybody.

The prince's eyes started to burn while he tried to hold back the tears, while what he had previously mistook for shadows cast by the fire were exposed instead as horrible bruises showing, clearly written on his sister's skin, the abuse she had suffered at the sorcerer's hands.

\- Oh Tamara, what has that monster done to you?

Tamara lifted her face and for the first time she meet her brother's eyes. She had expected hate, rage, surely disgust after Flagg's revelation but instead he was weeping for her, with her, and for the first time in years the queen felt a glimmer of hope and, gathering her courage, she took a tentative step toward the only male figure who had touched her with tenderness and without lust in five years. She placed her forehead on his chest, she had forgotten how tall her brother was! In tears she at least managed to ask the forgiveness she had never dared to ask for in these years of captivity, in body for him and in soul for her.

Peter's arms circled her protectively and he hold her to his chest lightly only to tighten his grasp progressively and Tamara, in the embrace of someone who really loved her, felt finally free to let go of the burden of all these years of guilt and pain.

§§§

Tamara had gone straight to her rooms to get dressed, saying she could not possibly present herself in tribunal while in her nightgown, and then they had woken up the High Judge, a little timid and fainthearted man who took Peyna's place and who had always bowed to the sorcerer's will. The man cleared Peter from every charge after hearing the queen's testimony and above all after having the castle searched to make sure the sorcerer was really gone for good.

It was some hours before dawn but the little group was still together: Peter, Tamara, Ben, Naomi, Dennis and even Frisky were gathered in Peter's sitting room inside his old quarters. They felt relieved for the danger they had escaped from and unbelieving for how, in the course of a single night, the destiny of the whole kingdom had radically changed.

Peter had insisted on pouring everybody a glass of wine, even Dennis who had tried uselessly to protest. Only Tamara declined the wine, preferring some tea. Brother and sister sat side by side on a settee and Peter hold tightly her hand and comforted her as she told her tale. She hid nothing, not the burning jealousy toward Peter that almost turned into hate, nor the cruelties and crimes she took part to and ordered during her reign, even if they had been prompted by Flagg. She had been unable to meet their eyes as she confirmed to her brother the sorcerer's story, about how their relationship begun and how she had been the one to offer herself to him, about how she had never really turned him down nor forbid him access to her bed. Full of shame she confessed he hadn't always hurt her but she had been incapable to reveal the pleasure she discovered with him nor to describe in details the times he brutalized her.

\- You were so young, Tamara.

Her brother brushed the lacy high neckline that covered the bruises.

\- You would never persuade me that it was you who asked him to do this to you. You couldn't have known. He hurt you, you and the kingdom and the worst thing is that he made you believe it was your fault, that you were the one who wanted it.

Naomi was the one to save her from the guilt that seemed to suffocate her, drowning her in a sea of shame. She bent to meet her downcast eyes and spoke with conviction.

\- You did not seduce him. You looked for comfort and kindness in a difficult moment of your life, a moment when you were alone and vulnerable. He took advantage of it. He took advantage of you, of your fragility and of your innocence. You are a victim, not an accomplice. Listen to me: it was not your fault!

Oh, how many times Tamara had wished to hear those words, from anybody! Having a woman pronounce them, someone who had no part in that tragedy, was oddly comforting. She hadn't known her before, she wasn't judging her, she had listened to that sordid tale without prejudices and now she was absolving her. Peter repeated those sweet words followed by Ben and Dennis who was weeping openly.

\- Thank you, you have no idea of how much your words mean to me. But it doesn't matter how many times you'll say them, it doesn't matter if you'll shout them from the palace roofs nor if you, Peter, were to write them on an edict. The population, the guards, everybody will always think of me as Tamara the Tax Bringer and once it would become public knowledge I shared a bed with Flagg, and believe me it will, they will add Devil's whore to my name. They'll came to the palace asking for my blood because he's gone but I'm still here, dirtied by his touch.

She got up from the settee leaving her brother's comforting embrace and Naomi's hand.

\- I made up my mind, Peter. I have to go away.

The future king jumped to his feet, followed by the exclamations of denials of the others.

\- You can't possibly understand… I cannot stay.

Tamara's expression was serene amidst her tears. She had cried that night, just as she had cried in the previous nights but these tears were different. She had cried in desperation and shame while the pain festered inside her like an infected wound. Now the tears were freeing and every drop washed away the infection leaving her light and clean for the first time since she lost her innocence.

\- But… where will you go?

\- I'll go hunting. You know my aim is unrivaled. I'll hunt down a beast that inflicted great suffering to the kingdom and to me. A dragon who still lies in the shadows as he licks his wounds, safe in the knowledge he cheated death.

\- You can't think of confronting Flagg alone!

Peter was understandably concerned for his sister who seemed to him weak and fragile in that moment. He thought with growing horror of how much Flagg had hurt her, of how much he could still hurt her before killing her if he were to take hold of her again, of all the dangers she would be facing during that endeavour and how she could die even before finding the sorcerer. And then she smiled to him and the young king-to-be realized that he never remembered a time in which his sister had smiled to him. She placed a hand on his chest above his heart and he covered it with his own, not knowing but imagining how much reaching out and touch another human being was painful for her.

\- Talking about what happened and having your forgiveness helped a lot, but if I was to stay here I don't know what will become of me. I've been smothered by terror and shame for such a long time. I need to face my fears, I need to face him and make him pay for what he did to you, to father and to me. I wouldn't be able to sleep knowing he is still out there and free and the only way to stop being a victim or an accomplice is to strike him first. I will be an huntress and he will become my prey.

Peter had to let her go accompanied only by Dennis who had categorically refused to be left behind, arguing he too had his sins to atone for. The new king, who would be crowned at midday, watched his sister and his butler leave in the grey light preceding dawn. Dennis was carrying the supplies and Tamara, hair cut short, dressed in trousers and for the first time not in white, carried their father's bow. Peter stayed there watching them becoming smaller and smaller until they disappear and he couldn't help but feel desperation, asking himself if it was the last time he saw them.

THE END

* * *

AN: I always though it strange that Perter recognized his brother, whom he hadn't seen since he was a child while Flagg, who saw him become an ugly and fat boy full of pimples (Mr King's description), mistook him for Roland. Therefore I choose to do the reverse.

AUTHOR RUMBLING:

Yes! It's done!

Are you disappointed by the end? Me too. Mr King wrote that Dennis and Thomas left at dawn, to hunt down Flagg, while Peter weeps. Perhaps they will find him, perhaps not, surely they will live fantastic adventures. Thank you for nothing Mr King. For years I waited a sequel that never arrived.

About Flagg: I know I subverted his character, making him sometimes appear even (gasp!) nice and sometimes exaggeratedly cruel, but I didn't wrote "The guilty" in one go, it took me two years and I jumped here and there in writing the chapters so sometimes I felt happy and Flagg was nice and sometimes I felt naughty and Flagg was a monster. Moreover I know, having read and re-read the story many times, that one could think Flagg in love with Tamara. It is not so. Flagg, as in Mr King's book, is incapable of love and in "The guilty" what he feels for his victim is a mixture of lust, desire to possess, obsession and a diluted and bastardized form of love.

In "The eye of the dragon" Flagg is at Thomas's bedside:

(Beware: I'm translating from the Italian version because I don't own an English version of the book so this is the translation of a translation)

 _Flagg took in his hand the hand of the sleeping boy and caressed it with something similar to fondness. In his own way he did love Thomas, but Sasha would have recognized Flagg's love for what it was: the love of an owner for his pet._

This sentence with King's repeated claim that Thomas wasn't evil, just sad and unlucky, gave me inspiration for this story. What would have happened if Thomas has been born a girl? Into what could that kind of love evolve had him be a girl desperately in need of love and praising from a male (fatherly) figure? And so this story was born. But, I repeat, Flagg doesn't become good, Flagg is evil to the bones and there is no saving grace within him. Tamara/Thomas is his pet (at a certain point Flagg is called Architect of his birth and Keeper of his life. Still translating from Italian) and every regret he has for losing control is exactly that: because _he lost the control_. In the movies they say to rape victims that is not about the sex but about the power and _this_ is was my story is about.

I want to say thank _Bless you_ who reviewed me and _delora067_ who favoured me.

Update 12/04/2019: a huge THANK YOU! to _DoctorChimera_ who told me the name of the arrow (and for leaving a very nice review and for favouring my story)!

Thank you for reading and please leave a review, doesn't matter how much time passed since I published this, I'm always happy to read your comments!


End file.
